UCSB    LIBRARY 


MATRIMONY  MINUS 
MATERNITY 


MATRIMONY  MINUS 
MATERNITY 


BY 

M.  H.  SEXTON 


NEW  YORK 
THE  DEVIN-ADAIR  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,  1922,  BY 
THE  DEVIN-ADAIR  CO. 


All  Rights  Reserved  by  The  Devin-Adair  Co. 


Press  of 

J.  J.  Little  &  Ives  Company 
New  York,  U.  S.  A. 


PREFACE 

IN  ancient  Egypt  the  Apis  bull  was 
fanned  with  a  feather ;  to-day  his  stately 
brother  is  knocked  down  with  a  sledge. 

Job,  to  grow  a  velvety  skin,  raked  his 
slimy  pelt  with  a  potsherd. 

The  surgeon's  knife  explores  the  anat- 
omy of  man  and  destroys  the  haunts  of 
skulking  life,  while  the  pen  of  genius, 
dipped  in  the  ink  of  fact,  lifts  the  counter- 
pane from  the  bed  of  sin. 

Social  laxity  has  never  been  more  ram- 
pant than  at  the  present  day,  and  the  cod- 
dling methods  now  in  vogue  will  never 
starch  the  moral  fiber  of  man. 

In  the  following  pages  the  reader  will 
see  that  the  steed  of  thought  swings  along 
the  human  highway,  check  free,  pounding 
with  his  steel-rimmed  hoofs  the  pagan 
methods  that  have  outlived  the  Christ- 
numbered  centuries. 


vi  PREFACE 

It  is  sought  to  environ  the  home,  family, 
and  fireside  with  precepts  that  will  cleanse 
the  body  and  lacquer  the  soul  against  the 
burrowing  power  of  sin. 

Where  tear  gas  is  used  the  subject  in 
the  judgment  of  the  writer  merits  it. 

No  brief  is  held  for  any  creed,  and  every 
man  is  accepted  as  a  brother. 

With  the  theology  or  organized  beliefs 
of  men  the  following  pages  do  not  deal, 
nor  is  the  domain  of  technical  science  en- 
tered. 

While  standing  on  the  summit  of  man's 
activities  and  casting  his  eyes  across  the 
world,  a  lawyer  saw  the  moral  dreariness 
of  the  children  of  God  and  the  contempt 
for  law  among  the  children  of  men, — 
hence  set  out  to  lash  the  money  changers 
from  our  social  temples,  and  the  seven 
devils  from  our  Magdalens. 

Should  any  reader  behold  himself  in 
the  mirror  of  thought, — or  recognize  any 
of  his  sins  in  the  inventory  of  man's  cu- 
pidities, it  is  hoped  that  he  will  not  flame 
into  a  passion,  but  will  swallow  it  as  he 
would  physic,  on  the  theory  that  it  is  all 


PREFACE  vii 

intended  for  his  good.  Like  Buddha,  let 
him  reflect  that  if  he  meet  a  cripple  in  his 
travels,  there  is  time  to  become  like  unto 
him;  that  if  he  sees  a  cancerous  face,  let 
him  shudder  at  the  thought  that  he  may 
not  be  immune;  and  that  if  he  beholds  a 
decaying  corpse  by  the  roadside,  let  him 
remember  that — "the  paths  of  glory  lead 
but  to  the  grave." 


CONTENTS 

I      EUGENY     ....... 


II    MATRIMONY <•••     •  8 

III    MATING 20 

IV    MATRIMONIAL    BUREAU 25 

V  MYSTERIES  OF  CONCEPTION  AND  GESTATION      .  29 

VI    CONTROL  OF  OFFSPRING 42 

VII     STERILIZATION 57 

VIII    STANDAED 77 

IX  INTELLECTUALS  GENERALLY  UNFERTILE  ...  82 

X    SOCIETY 98 

XI    SHRINKING  PROGENY 132 

XII    PREVENTIVES .'     .     .  167 

XIII    EYE  OPENING  AT  PUBERTY I75 


XIV    DIVORCE 


179 


XV    SEQUENCE      ....,.<    ...    .....     202 


MATRIMONY 
MINUS  MATERNITY 

CHAPTER  I 
EUGENY 

IN  lighting  up  the  burrows  of  the  ver- 
min on  the  family  tree  and  in  locating 
stains  on  the  social  linen  of  this  day  and 
generation — in  the  words  of  Garrison: 
"I  will  be  as  harsh  as  Truth,  and  as  un- 
compromising as  Justice.  On  this  subject 
I  do  not  wish  to  think,  or  speak,  or  write 
with  moderation.  No !  No !  Tell  a  man 
whose  house  is  on  fire  to  give  a  moderate 
alarm;  tell  him  to  moderately  rescue  his 
wife  from  the  hands  of  the  ravisher ;  tell 
the  mother  to  gradually  extricate  her 
babe  from  the  fire  into  which  it  has  fallen 
— but  urge  me  not  to  use  moderation  in  a 

course  like  the  present.    I  am  in  earnest 

i 


2         Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

— I  will  not  equivocate — I  will  not  excuse 
— I  will  not  retreat  a  single  inch — and  I 
will  be  heard.  The  apathy  of  the  people  is 
enough  to  make  any  statue  leap  from  its 
pedestal  and  hasten  the  resurrection  of 
the  dead." 

It  may  be  that  the  advocates  of  eugenics 
and  sexual  precociousness  are  unconscious 
worshipers  at  the  shrine  of  Pandora. 

Many  well-meaning,  intellectual  people, 
during  all  of  the  ages,  by  flattery,  desire 
for  praise,  hope  of  renown  or  temporal 
advancement ;  together  with  many  honest 
seekers  of  truth  with  the  betterment  of 
man  at  heart,  have  launched  their  inquisi- 
torial barks  upon  moral  seas  of  unknown 
depths,  concealing  monsters  which  have 
arisen  without  warning  and  strewn  their 
wakes  with  wreckage. 

Havelock  Ellis  says : 

By  "Eugenics"  is  meant  the  scientific 
study  of  all  the  agencies  by  which  the  hu- 
man race  may  be  improved,  and  the  effort 
to  give  practical  effect  to  those  agencies 
by  conscious  and  deliberate  action  in  fa- 
vor of  better  breeding. 


Eugeny  3 

It  has  been  settled  that  animals  and 
vegetation  can  be  improved  by  the  guid- 
ance of  man.  Such  interference  is 
known  to  us  as  the  science  of  eugenics. 
But  when  the  sexual  progressives  under- 
take the  application  of  the  barn-yard  rules 
to  man,  they  are  confronted  with  their 
equals,  and  since  the  laws  of  civilization 
accord  to  men  and  women  alike  security  in 
their  nuptial  selections,  sexual  scientists, 
unwittingly  in  the  service  of  the  devil, 
base  their  hope  for  aid  upon  public  opin- 
ion agitated  to  the  point  of  statutory 
enactments. 

It  must  be  conceded  that  it  is  a  fascinat- 
ing subject  even  to  the  bystander,  and  it 
may  be  that  in  time  to  come,  as  in  the  past, 
enactments  may  be  brought  about  in  sup- 
port of  some  phases  of  it.t  For  the  in- 
tended purpose  they  will  be  as  futile  as 
the  sanitary  laws  against  spitting  or  the 
Mosaic  laws  against  adultery  and  idolatry. 
They  will  be  in  constant  conflict  with  the 
innate  laws  of  love,  hate,  sex  attraction, 
and  free  will  given  to  man  with  his  first 
breath. 


4         Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

Long  before  St.  Patrick  built  a  fire  of 
icicles  and  during  the  intervening  years, 
sincere  men  ascended  the  mountain  of 
thought  and  in  the  haze  of  its  summit  un- 
availingly  struggled  with  the  mystic  prob- 
lems of  life.  Some  have  had  brass  enough 
in  their  blood  to  offer  amendments  to  the 
laws  of  progeny  worked  out  in  the  Gar- 
den of  Eden.  There  God  said,  "Let  us 
make  man  in  our  image,  after  our  like- 
ness." 

Darwin  was  the  first  to  slip  on  the  Ba- 
nana peel  of  reason  in  an  effort  to  estab- 
lish that  "man  in  our  image"  was  really 
the  image  of  a  monkey,  and  in  his  day, 
strange  as  it  may  seem,  many  of  the  lead- 
ing thinkers  worshiped  at  his  shrine,  but 
to-day  the  best  thought  rejects  this  theory 
as  a  scientific  folly. 

The  animal  called  man,  now  under  con- 
sideration, has  240  bones,  7,000,000  skin 
pores,  1200  breaths  per  hour,  98  degrees 
of  heat,  33  ounces  of  insensible  perspira- 
tion a  day,  an  average  brain  of  3l/2  pounds, 
about  2500  square  inches  of  skin,  10  yards 
of  bowels,  46  quarts  of  water,  and  a  pas- 


Eugeny  5 

sionate  longing  for  the  daughters  of  Eve, 
which  has  pranced  in  his  blood  for  sixty 
centuries,  and  been  calmed  by  onanism, 
buggery,  rape,  incest,  fornication,  adul- 
tery, and  matrimony. 

Man,  on  which  the  scientists  propose  a 
social  operation,  infests  every  part  of  the 
known  world.  Climatic  and  social  condi- 
tions have  bred  in  the  human  family  a 
multiplicity  of  distinct  races.  As  an  an- 
tidote for  the  miseries  of  life  about  four 
hundred  spiritual  specifics  have  been  for- 
mulated by  man,  which  assure  cold-stor- 
age security  to  the  soul  while  in  the  body, 
and  a  bed  of  down  after  it  has  gone  over 
the  top.  Creeds  and  superstitions  have 
so  burrowed  into  man  that  they  unalter- 
ably affect  his  habits  of  life  and  beliefs 
touching  matrimony,  monogamy,  polyg- 
amy, constancy,  and  offspring.  Hence  by 
common  consent  and  in  spots  only,  can  the 
eugenic  scientist  ever  hope  to  influence 
people  to  statutory  mating  or  regulated 
offspring. 

As  well  attempt  to  teach  Greek  to  a 
gorilla  as  to  eugenize  people  who  believe 


6         Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

that  they  can  save  their  souls  by  chewing 
and  swallowing  a  printed  prayer;  that 
they  can  purify  the  blood  by  eating  stews 
made  of  skinned  moles  and  bats;  that 
neuralgia  can  be  cured  by  sticking  a  piece 
of  lemon  peel  over  the  nerve  where  the 
jaw  bone  joins  the  skull;  that  headache 
can  be  stopped  by  a  strip  of  snakeskin 
bound  on  the  forehead ;  that  hiccough  can 
be  relieved  by  boiled  ants'  nests  taken  in- 
ternally; that  snake  bites  and  heart  ail- 
ments can  be  conquered  by  slowly  swal- 
lowing a  broth  made  of  boiling  water  and 
alligators '  teeth ;  and,  finally,  that  all  dis- 
eases will  yield  to  the  red  topknot  of  a 
woodpecker  if  worn  constantly  in  the  ear. 

Sexual  relations  never  have  been,  and 
never  will  be,  fully  controlled  by  man- 
made  laws.  The  divine  law  even  has  ut- 
terly failed  to  bring  to  its  observance  any 
considerable  portion  of  the  human  race. 

The  propaganda,  now  abroad  in  this 
fair  land,  having  reached  us  from  other 
shores,  seeking  to  unburden  woman-kind 
by  damming  up  the  maternal  stream,  has 
found  some  congenial  centers  in  which  to 


Eugeny  7 

build  its  nasty  nest  and  hatch  from  its 
eggs  social  vipers,  physical  cripples  and 
midget  souls  who  will  satiate  the  fires  of 
lust  on  the  armored  altar  of  love  and 
finally  sink  into  a  childless  rottenness, 
then  with  no  evidence  that  they  have  bene- 
fited the  world,  they  may  be  called  to 
render  to  God  an  account  of  their  steward- 
ship and  hear  the  final  words,  "  Depart 
from  Me,  ye  cursed." 

An  orderly  handling  of  Eugeny,  the 
subject  under  consideration,  requires  that 
it  be  treated  under  subdivisions. 


CHAPTER  II 

MATRIMONY 

SEXUAL  relations,  not  prefaced  by  mat- 
rimony, always  have  been  condemned  by 
the  laws  of  God  and  civilized  man.  As 
Eugeny  anticipates  wedlock,  the  evolu- 
tion thereof  must  be  considered,  as  well  as 
the  motives  that  inspire  it,  in  order  to 
determine  man's  power  to  forecast  its 
fruit. 

By  covenant  there  has  been  sexual  union 
from  the  very  dawn  of  man  under  the 
social  name  of  marriage. 

The  first  connubial  expression  is  found 
in  Genesis :  "  Therefore  shall  a  man  leave 
his  father  and  mother,  and  shall  cleave 
unto  his  wife ;  and  they  shall  be  one  flesh." 

This  language  excludes  polygamy. 

Evidently  one  man  and  one  woman  was 
the  divine  plan  for  companionship  and 

8 


Matrimony  9 

propagation,  or  more  ribs  would  have 
been  used. 

The  one- wife  "cleave"  law  seems  to 
have  been  observed  to  the  time  of  the 
Flood  and  even  in  loading  the  Ark,  as 
Noah  was  commanded  to  take  in  "the  male 
and  his  female,"  and  when  the  shower 
was  over,  Noah  was  directed:  "go  forth 
of  the  Ark,  thou  and  thy  wife,  and  thy 
sons,  and  thy  sons'  wives  with  thee." 

The  law  of  monogamy  received  its  first 
great  shock  when  Sarai,  whose  frail 
knowledge  of  man  led  her  prayerfully  to 
implore  her  husband  to  "go  in  unto"  her 
willing  tent  maid. 

Then  being  ripe  and  roseate  with  youth, 
and  but  recently  married,  Abram  reluc- 
tantly "hearkened  to  the  voice  of  Sarai." 

After  several  months  of  anxious  brood- 
ing the  blood  of  the  Jew  and  Egyptian 
blended  in  the  wild  man  Ishmael. 

The  rigidity  of  the  old  rule,  involving 
the  wife's  consent,  has  been  so  greatly 
relaxed  by  fleeting  centuries  that  now  the 
domestic  and  the  head  of  the  house  rarely 


10       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

consult  the  wife  before  they  jointly  sacri- 
fice to  the  goddess  of  love. 

The  relations  of  the  cook  Hagar  and  the 
Patriarch  Abraham  furnish  us  with  the 
first  recorded  family  scandal,  as  well  as 
the  earliest  instance  of  the  wildness  of  a 
wife's  jealousy  by  which  Abe  was  forced 
to  drive  his  dark-skinned  mistress  of  low 
origin  from  his  bed  and  board  with  no 
other  heritage  than  a  bottle  of  water,  a 
loaf  of  bread,  and  a  bastard. 

Had  Abraham  obeyed  the  promptings 
of  eugenics  and  continued  hopefully  to  ob- 
serve God's  command,  " Increase  and  mul- 
tiply," the  illegitimate  progenitor  of  a 
great  nation — "whose  hand  was  against 
every  man" — and  from  whom  Mohammed 
claimed  descent,  would  have  been  lost  to 
the  world. 

Solon,  one  of  the  seven  sages  of  Greece, 
in  the  sixth  century,  B.C.,  chained  the  am- 
bulatory laws  of  marriage  to  a  fixed  stat- 
ute. 

The  humanity,  wisdom,  and  morality 
reflected  in  this  pagan's  conception,  when 
compared  with  our  own  family  safe- 


Matrimony  11 

guards,   should  make   our   evolutionary 
twentieth-century     Christians     feel     as 
humble  as  Job  on  his  ash  hill. 
The  Solon  Law  provided : 

That  the  bride  and  bridegroom  shall 
be  shut  into  a  chamber,  and  eat  a  quince 
together;  and  that  the  husband  of  an 
heiress  shall  consort  with  her  thrice  a 
month;  for  though  there  be  no  children, 
yet  it  is  an  honor  and  due  affection  which 
an  husband  ought  to  pay  to  a  virtuous, 
chaste  wife;  it  takes  off  all  petty  differ- 
ences, and  will  not  permit  their  little 
quarrels  to  proceed  to  an  eruption. 

Plutarch  says : 

In  all  other  marriages  Solon  forbade 
doweries  to  be  given ;  the  wife  was  to  have 
three  suits  of  clothes,  a  little  considerable 
household  stuff,  and  that  was  all,  for  he 
would  not  have  marriages  contracted  for 
gain  or  an  estate,  but  for  pure  love,  kind 
affection,  and  birth  of  children. 

In  China  a  married  woman  was  without 
respect  until  the  hour  of  her  travail,  and 
was  particularly  honored  if  she  brought 
to  the  nation  a  son. 


12       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

"Happy,"  says  Confucius,  "is  the  union 
with  wife  and  children ;  it  is  like  the  music 
of  lutes  and  harps." 

The  moral  pendulum  is  constantly 
swinging  from  one  extreme  to  the  other. 

The  tendency  of  the  idle,  passionate, 
restless  rich,  like  St.  Augustine  in  his 
youth,  is  to  try  out  all  of  the  old  and  in- 
vent new  sexual  thrills. 

Many  of  our  godless  wealthy  heads  of 
families  do  not  pretend  to  confine  them- 
selves to  one  household.  They  look  upon 
a  wife  as  a  domestic  convenience,  the  chan- 
nel for  an  occasional  heir  and  the  means 
of  maintaining  a  hypocritical  appearance 
of  exterior  respectability,  while  courte- 
sans in  queenly  apparel  walk  out  from 
palatial  apartments,  covertly  maintained 
by  church,  financial,  and  social  leaders, 
until  anger,  revenge,  death,  or  a  suicide  re- 
veals their  villainies  to  the  world,  all  of 
which  evidences  a  return  to  pagan  prac- 
tices on  the  part  of  a  startling  number  of 
our  leading  men. 

The  sexual  filth  that  rides  the  matri- 
monial tide  seems  to  ooze  from  the  mor- 


Matrimony  13 

ally  weakened  condition  of  men,  con- 
stantly diluted  by  neglect  of  the  ever  will- 
ing graces  about  them,  who  spring  from 
their  knees  at  the  beck  of  a  coozie  niggling 
on  the  highways  of  sin. 

Judge  Hopkins,  of  the  Chicago  Court 
of  Domestic  Relations,  recently  sought 
transfer  to  another  branch  of  the  court  on 
the  ground  that  the  marital  woes  poured 
into  his  ears  daily  for  more  than  six 
months  had  completely  unnerved  him; 
that  they  were  such  as  to  attend  a  man 
in  his  solitary  walks,  arrest  him  in  the 
midst  of  his  debaucheries  and  fill  even  his 
dreams  with  terror. 

He  said,  on  retiring : 

Once  I  viewed  marriage  through  rosy 
mists  of  sentiment  and  poetry.  I  believed 
there  was  still  love  in  the  world — love  that 
endured  from  the  altar  to  the  grave.  In 
the  Court  of  Domestic  Relations  my  ideals 
died  one  by  one.  Day  after  day  I  lis- 
tened to  nothing  but  the  sorrows  and 
tragedies  of  married  couples.  I  began  to 
wonder  whether  any  such  thing  as  marital 
happiness  existed  on  earth.  So  I  asked 
to  be  transferred.  It  was  a  last  measure 


14       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

to  self-defense — a  measure  to  save  at  least 
some  of  my  ideals. 

It  must  be  apparent  to  men  and  women 
of  the  world  that  just  as  soon  as  a  mar- 
ried woman  begins  to  ease  up  on  the  corset 
string  of  virtue  by  permitting  a  man,  not 
her  own,  to  linger  on  her  lips,  or  to  pass 
to  her  a  cocktail  across  a  rose-shaded  table 
in  a  gay  restaurant,  or  seemingly  to  acci- 
dentally touch  her  amative  centers,  that 
moment  she  receives  into  the  parlor  of 
matrimony  a  guest  who  may  pick  the  lock 
of  chastity;  for,  as  Shakespeare  says, 
"touches,  though  gentle,  still  conquer 
chastity,"  and  with  that  conquered,  the 
hen  of  matrimony  soon  begins  to  brood, 
cluck,  and  show  temper. 

Connubial  restlessness  is  stimulated  by 
vitalized  fiction  and  photo  plays,  now  used 
to  entertain  the  people,  which  are  often 
founded  on  matrimonial  blisters,  or  the 
webbing  of  females,  with  suggestive  sen- 
suality as  the  chief  attraction.  Any  show- 
house  management  will  tell  you  that  it 
would  much  prefer  to  place  before  the 


Matrimony  15 

public  clean  entertainments,  but  that  the 
general  condition  of  society  is  such  that 
snappy  stories  in  the  magazines,  the  por- 
trayal of  woman's  downfall  on  the  stage, 
her  emulation  of  the  undraped  statue  in 
dress,  and  her  growing  tendency  to  booze 
and  bridge,  with  an  exterior  cleanliness 
and  an  interior  moral  rottenness,  and  all 
approved  by  the  hunters  of  corseted 
shoats,  have  forced  all  sources  of  enter- 
tainment, including  show  houses,  hotels 
and  restaurants,  to  cater  to  the  social 
swill-hunters,  or  die  of  monetary  dry  rot. 

Though  cruelly  unjust,  it  is  quite  the 
habit  to  condemn  a  lapse  in  woman  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  she  must  breast  the 
storm  of  wild  desire  within,  and  parry 
the  seductive,  passionate,  embracing,  heat- 
charged  pleadings  of  the  courageous  male 
who  presses  her  to  submission  or  rebel- 
lion. 

Dorothy  Dix  says : 

Every  pretty  girl  in  the  world  is  in  daily 
and  hourly  danger  from  the  street  masher 
on  every  corner  and  from  the  men  she 
meets  in  society  and  works  with  in  busi- 


16       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

ness,  who  are  forever,  openly  or  covertly, 
tempting  her  to  adventure  along  the  prim- 
rose path  with  them. 

By  wine,  curiosity,  or  through  her  own 
passionate  untrained  heart,  many  a  wo- 
man has  been  tempted,  like  fish,  to  nibble 
till  hooked. 

It  has  been  published  that  a  noted 
clergyman,  who  has  personally  explored 
the  subways  of  immorality,  asserted  that 
one-half  the  husbands  and  wives  of  New 
York  are  unfaithful  to  their  marriage 
vows. 

This  proclamation,  coming  from  the 
moral  night-soil  man  of  the  great  metrop- 
olis, would  lead  one  to  conclude  that  the 
human  race  is  gliding  down  hill  to  hell  and 
to  believe  in  original  sin,  and  doubt  the 
perseverance  of  the  saints  and  even  the 
chastity  of  Mary. 

Much  of  the  carbon  which  tends  to  un- 
seat the  matrimonial  valves  is  found  in 
that  part  of  the  press  of  the  country 
which  seems  to  be  willing  to  do  anything 
but  be  respectable  for  the  almighty  dollar. 
With  the  general  news  of  the  day  are  also 


Matrimony  17 

thrown  at  our  doors,  to  be  often  read  by 
children,  glowing,  lying,  nasty  advertise- 
ments urging  the  public  to  traffic  in  sure- 
cure  bald-head  remedies,  face  lotions, 
freckle-eradicators,  waist-reducers,  flesh- 
killers  and  flesh-builders,  wart-crumblers, 
corn-lifters,  bunion-pacifiers,  foot-deodor- 
izers, rheumatic-twinge  yankers,  torpid- 
liver  rattlers,  kidney-flushers,  constipa- 
tion vents,  diarrhetic  astringents,  evacu- 
ators,  pain  ferrets,  furred-tongue  erasers, 
itching-piles  soothers,  drooping-f  emale  lo- 
tions and  lost-manhood  resurrectors,  to- 
gether with  pictures  of  the  few  shameless 
scavengers  of  the  medical  profession  who 
say  to  the  libertine  and  developing  youth : 
"Fear  not!  Sound  all  the  depths  and 
shoals  of  sensuality,  then  come  to  us,  as 
we  hold  the  power  of  life  and  death  over 
every  microbe  that  lurks  in  the  crummy 
valley  of  bartered  sexual  commerce. " 

The  olla-podrida  of  many  of  our  daily 
papers  would  disturb  the  abdominal  poise 
of  a  yellow  dog.  Conglomerately  we  find 
editorial  splashes  of  social,  civic,  or  politi- 
cal morality;  tickling  engagement  an- 


18       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

nouncements ;  the  lying,  bombastic,  flam- 
boyant wedding  write-up;  followed  by 
copious  extracts  from  the  nastiest  por- 
tions of  divorce  proceedings;  church  no- 
tices sleeping  beside  Duffy's  Malt,  Pe- 
runa,  Swamp  Root,  Twilight  Sleep,  Tape- 
worm poisons;  a  sermon  on  the  seventh 
commandment,  balanced  by  the  picture  of 
a  medical  degenerate  barking  his  wares 
and  willingness  to  clean  sexual  sewers  for 
a  nominal  sum. 

A  Sunday  edition  of  the  Houston  Post, 
a  widely  circulated  paper,  carried  into 
the  homes  of  its  readers  the  following  ad- 
vertisement of  a  prominent  merchant: 

Our  Ladies'  Garter  Department: 
We  can  give  you  an  All  Silk  Garter 
for  50  cents  with  nice  buckles  with 
such  reading  on  them  as  "Private 
Grounds";  "Stop,  Mamma  is  Com- 
ing"; "Look  Quick";  "Good  Night, 
Call  Again";  "I  am  a  Warm  Baby"; 
"Take  off  Your  Things,"  etc. 

A  New  York  City  daily  on  February  7, 
1916,  announced  that  conversation  hose 
for  Palm  Beach  dames,  displayed  by  ho- 


Matrimony  19 

tel  shops  and  seen  at  balls,  tell  much. 
Some  are  of  hand  made  lace  and  cost  up 
to  one  hundred  dollars  a  pair.  One  has  a 
mouse  at  the  skirt  line,  while  its  mate 
says,  " Watch  your  step."  Another  says, 
"Delighted,"  while  its  companion  shows 
a  clock  face  with  the  hands  at  twelve  and 
the  words  "Good  Night." 

On  May  15,  one  of  our  Utica  papers 
published  this : 

A  neighbor  told  my  mother  about  Lydia 
E.  Pinkham's  Vegetable  Compound  and 
I  took  it  and  now  I  feel  like  a  new  person. 
I  don't  suffer  any  more  and  I  am  regular 
every  month. 

If  the  lucre-loving  press  continues  to 
emblazon  fakes,  Father  John  may  yet  be 
crowned  "King  of  the  Gullet"  and  Lydia 
Pinkham  "Queen  of  the  Matrix." 

If  men  and  women  would  bow  to  the 
full  meaning  of  the  wedding  ring,  the 
false  gods  of  to-day  would  be  cast  from 
their  pedestals,  tranquillity  would  nestle 
in  the  lap  of  matrimony  and  the  horrible 
effects  of  ravishing  sexual  ills-would  cease 
to  deface  the  offspring  of  man. 


CHAPTER  III 

MATING 

MATING,  in  our  social  structure,  is  a  sub- 
ject that  has  been  periodically  cuffed 
about  since  the  ancient  days  of  Theognis 
by  fluffy  intellects  and  by  university  men 
with  less  practical  brain  than  the  angora 
goat,  and  whom  an  asinego  might  tutor  on 
the  tricks  of  the  mattress  and  social  de- 
ceits. 

Yet  these  God-forsaken  modernists  cry 
out  that  mating  must  be  controlled,  if 
need  be,  by  legislation. 

Only  a  f arding-bag  brain,  where  green 
stuff  lies  undigested,  would  suggest,  even, 
such  an  impossibility. 

The  statutory  stricture  cult,  engaged  in 
high-brow  development,  would  have  those 
afflicted  with  love,  with  generation  in  view, 

submit  their  family  tree  and  sexual  ma- 

20 


Mating  21 

chinery  to  a  physician  and  in  the  somber 
shadows  of  doubt  await  his  certificate. 

Communities  would  soon  learn  that  spe- 
cial examiners,  politically  appointed,  and 
with  an  itching  palm,  would  pass  on  to 
the  portals  of  matrimony  every  lung- 
spitter  and  blood-poisoned  applicant  that 
could  pay  the  price,  and  would  do  it  with 
as  little  qualm  as  the  present  professional 
murderer  experiences  when  he  presses  the 
sound  through  the  door  of  the  temple,  gen- 
erally sealed  by  illicit  contact,  and  feeds  to 
maggots  the  embryonic  temple  of  a  soul. 

You  cannot  legislate  virtue  into  a  whole 
people  nor  will  they  long  submit  to  ob- 
noxious laws. 

Lovers  will  ascend  a  high  mountain,  if 
need  be,  to  commit  matrimony  on  the 
summit. 

Legislative  enactments,  such  as  are  ad- 
vocated by  sex  maniacs,  with  the  nasty 
provisions  for  personal  exposure,  would 
tend  to  dry  the  fountain  of  matrimony  and 
multiply  celibates,  who,  with  God's  com- 
mand, "Increase  and  multiply,"  resound- 
ing in  their  ears,  would,  like  the  cats,  in 


22       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

the  soothing  stillness  of  the  night  wake 
up  the  world  with  carnal  carousals. 

Adam  was  the  first  male  to  yearn  for  a 
female,  and  that  yearning  has  lived  and 
burned  in  the  blood  of  man  during  all  of 
the  dreary  centuries  since.  This  female 
magnet  high-browed  and  low-browed,  in 
gorgeous  attire,  mean  attire,  and  in  no 
attire,  within  the  law,  without  the  law 
and  against  the  law,  has  always  drawn 
men  from  every  station  of  life  to  the  lap 
of  her  yearnings. 

The  social  sex-filters  who,  in  book  form, 
spew  their  mental  indigestion  upon  the 
world,  seek  application  of  the  Holstein 
breeder's  rules  to  man.  The  ten- thousand- 
dollar  bull  and  the  five-thousand-dollar 
cow  can  be  mated  and  occasionally  will 
increase  the  milk  supply.  But  how  are 
you  going  to  keep  the  wealthy,  social, 
blood-poisoned  scrub  out  of  the  nest  of 
the  wayward  woman,  attractive  common 
actress,  or  the  sensual,  socially  ambitious 
female  ? 

Will  it  ever  come  to  pass  that  only  the 
dyed-in-the-wool  type  shall  bring  forth, 


Mating  23 

while  the  ever  oncoming  amorous  women 
of  low  origin  shall  be  denied  the  thrills 
of  maternity.  As  a  general  rule,  in  every 
phase  of  animal  life  dependent  upon  coi- 
tion for  progeny,  the  amative  male  pur- 
sues the  female  to  the  threshold  of  her 
choice. 

As  well  try  to  hang  the  Mediterranean 
on  a  grape  vine  to  dry  as  by  statutory 
enactment  to  force  mating  among  unwill- 
ing human  subjects. 

Sex  attraction,  for  mating  purposes, 
among  men  and  women,  will  forever  defy 
the  stock-breeder's  rules. 

If  mating  were  practical  there  is  no  way 
to  limit  the  sexual  activities  to  the  pair 
mated. 

From  the  sparrow  to  the  virtuous  queen 
for  mating  purposes  the  male  will  be 
selected. 

For  if  perchance  they  feel  the  amorous  flame — 
No  choice  have  they — for  every  man 's  the  same. 

Mate  those  who  meet  the  requirements 
of  the  most  aesthetic  sexologist,  and  what 
assurance  is  there  that  they  will  breed  at 


24       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

all,  and  if  they  do,  how  can  the  mind  and 
physique  of  the  offspring  be  definitely  in- 
fluenced by  man-made  rules,  in  view  of 
the  fact  that  developing  life  germs  blindly 
obey  unyielding  natural  laws  $ 

It  must  be  that  race-control  trumpeters 
are  the  victims  of  catarrhal  head  noises, 
rather  than  the  called  harbingers  of  social 
reform,  else  they  would  not  have  been  led 
to  conceive  that  which  they  cannot  bring 
forth  because  of  the  natural  barriers  that 
plug  the  orifice  of  generation. 

The  greatest  present  need  is  a  richer 
mixture  of  morality  for  the  engine  of 
love. 

Myriads  of  times  has  virtue  been  will- 
ingly sacrificed  on  the  altar  of  ambition 
and  secretly  bartered  for  place  and  power. 
Incontinence  has  led  men  across  lands  and 
seas ;  bent  them  to  intrigue,  larceny,  mur- 
der and  suicide;  wrecked  hearts,  homes 
and  thrones;  bred  wars;  wiped  out  na- 
tional boundaries  and  many  times  changed 
the  map  of  the  world. 


CHAPTER  IV 

MATRIMONIAL  BUREAU 

As  an  aid  to  the  mating  of  compatible 
and  physically  fit  people,  the  tomnoddy 
sexual  progressives,  who  chafe  under  the 
present  semi-decent  restraining  laws 
enacted  for  social  betterment,  now  un- 
blushingly  urge  a  trial  matrimonial  bu- 
reau, which  to  my  mind  falls  but  little 
short  of  lechery  refined  by  sanction.  Al- 
low such  a  law  for  the  sake  of  argument, 
and  what  would  follow?  Men  or  women 
who  failed  to  qualify  would  go  forth  into 
the  world  marked  to  be  ever  after  pur- 
sued by  the  suspicion,  engendered  by  gos- 
sipers,  that  they  were  not  well  sexed,  that 
there  was  a  wrinkle  in  them  somewhere ; 
hence  in  communities  where  known  they 
would  be  doomed  to  celibacy,  or  those 
physically  capable  would  become  sexual 
nomads. 

25 


26       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

Start  the  experimental  station  where 
the  trial  marriage  candidates  may  test 
their  fitness  with  no  resultant  obligations, 
and  society  will  soon  become  about  as  or- 
derly as  a  harem  in  hell. 

I  imagine  that  the  matrimonial  trial  sta- 
tion would  soon  become  very  popular,  and 
the  she-pearl  of  virtue  a  very  cheap  article 
of  commerce  in  the  marts  of  man's  will. 

Just  as  soon  as  the  unbelievers,  sexual 
idolaters,  and  the  morally  torpid  men  of 
science  succeed  in  prying  the  fig  leaf  from 
the  goddess  of  chastity,  and  lifting  the 
counterpane  of  marital  constancy,  as 
woven  by  the  Christian  Church,  you  will 
see  the  Syrian  cities  of  Sodom  and  Go- 
morrah revitalized  in  our  own  fair  land, 
and  our  men,  like  the  snail,  shall  leave 
behind  them  a  slimy  track  on  which  they 
will  have  wasted  themselves  away. 

Of  course,  the  great  power  of  the  Chris- 
tian world  will  continue  energetically  to 
war  upon  all  devilish  and  socially  baneful 
influences,  which  on  the  surface  seem 
harmless  yet  tend  to  sterilize  the  moral 
soil  of  the  human  heart  and  disrupt  the 


Matrimonial  Bureau  27 

social  trinity,  the  home,  family,  and  fire- 
side. 

Many  know  how  hard  it  is  for  morally 
inclined  men  and  women,  with  passion- 
charged  blood,  to  resist  the  call  to  sin. 

Since  virtue  carries  in  her  lap  her  own 
" order  of  sanctity,"  and  hard-working 
meandering  lust  warningly  burdens  her 
anatomy  with  nauseating  droolings  and 
weeping  scab-capped  sores,  why,  then, 
should  righteous  indignation  swell  into  a 
smothering  billow  at  the  approach  of  an 
alleged  improved  sexual  doctrine? — ask 
the  disciples  of  the  new  school.  Our  an- 
swer is,  that  well-meaning  and  God-fear- 
ing men  may  stand  in  the  narrow  highway 
of  morality  and  flap  their  shirts  and  shout 
against  sin  and  corruption  until  they 
swell  their  thyroids  into  goiters  without 
numerically  affecting  the  vast  army  of  lust 
wrecks  that  annually  dive  into  the  mud  at 
Hot  Springs. 

The  trial  marriage  or  matrimonial  bu- 
reau will  never  be  seriously  considered 
as  a  social  institution  so  long  as  nuptialed 
sensualists  can  at  will  have  their  ties  sun- 


28       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

dered  in  a  devilish  institution  sanctioned 
by  alleged  Christians,  called  the  divorce 
court. 

It  will  be  conceded  by  every  sane  man 
that  the  scabby,  rickety,  and  blood-poi- 
soned should  not  add  to  our  population, 
but  to  prevent  this,  we  need  not  become 
unduly  exercised,  as  nature  soon  calls 
home  all  of  her  weaklings. 


CHAPTER  V 

MYSTERIES  OF  CONCEPTION  AND 
GESTATION 

VOTARIES  of  a  controlled  and  more  per- 
fect offspring,  tell  me  how  it  happened 
that  the  blear-eyed  Leah  and  fair  Rachel 
came  from  the  same  shell.  Account  for 
the  velvety  Jacob  and  the  shaggy  Esau, 
twin  sons  of  Isaac  the  Patriarch  and 
Rebekah  the  Venus  of  Israel. 

Gestation  is  subject  to  so  many  mysteri- 
ous influences  that  every  child  is  carried 
to  birth  with  fear  and  trembling.  The 
laws  of  nature  toy  with  the  powers  of  man. 

Louis  II,  king  of  Hungary  and  Bo- 
hemia, was  born  without  a  scarfskin. 

Dr.  Harvey,  the  father  of  the  principle 
of  blood  circulation,  is  said  to  have  be- 
lieved in  and  written  of  a  race  of  men 
with  tails. 

The  kings  of  Denmark  have  descended, 

39 


30       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

as  some  say,  from  one  Ulf o,  the  son  of  a 
bear. 

In  the  family  of  Lepidus  at  Rome  there 
were  three,  not  successively,  but  by  inter- 
vals, that  were  born  with  the  same  eye 
covered  with  a  cartilage. 

A  race  is  mentioned  that  carried  from 
their  mother's  womb  the  form  of  the  head 
of  a  lance,  and  children  not  so  marked 
were  looked  upon  as  illegitimate. 

Galen,  in  his  treatise  on  the  measles, 
says  the  disease  was  brought  by  a  woman 
who  had  no  father. 

Lord  Bacon,  treating  of  the  period  of 
gestation  of  various  animals,  says  gravely 
that  an  ox  goes  twelve  months  with  young. 

Livy  speaks  of  a  woman  brought  to  bed 
in  a  desolate  island,  where  she  had  not  seen 
a  human  face  for  nine  years. 

Diodorus  Siculus  mentions  a  sorceress 
of  Egypt  who  had  passed  for  the  cele- 
brated Isis,  upon  the  strength  of  child- 
bearing  without  the  aid  of  man. 

It  is  recorded  that  while  a  princess  was 
watching  skillful  Egyptian  craftsmen  cut- 
ting down  the  Persea  trees  of  Pharaoh, 


Mysteries  of  Conception  and  Gestation  31 

a  chip  flew  into  her  mouth,  which  she 
swallowed,  and  after  many  days  she  bore 
a  son. 

In  Robinson's  Readings  in  European 
History,  it  is  recorded  that  during  the 
crusades  a  woman,  after  two  years  of  ges- 
tation, brought  forth  a  son  who  was  able 
to  talk  at  birth;  and  that  a  child  with  a 
double  set  of  limbs,  another  with  two 
heads,  and  twin-headed  lambs  were  born, 
while  colts  came  into  the  world  teethed 
as  mature  horses. 

Hippocrates  relates  that  his  mother 
used  frequently  to  tell  him  that  for  two 
years  before  his  birth  she  had  no  carnal 
intercourse  with  his  father,  but  that  she 
had  been  strangely  influenced  one  even- 
ing while  walking  in  the  garden.  We  can 
all  understand  the  doctrine  of  animal  ap- 
petency, if  not  of  the  chemical  affinities 
controlling  these  strange  births.  Before 
admitting  the  miraculous,  I  suggest  that 
these  mystifying  instances  of  nativity 
may  have  followed  pious  or  patriotic  coz- 
ening. 

Samson's    strength   lay   in   his    hair, 


32       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

may  be  thus  concealed  on  the  suggestion 
of  the  angel  who  apprised  his  barren 
mother  of  her  approaching  fertility. 

No  disciple  of  eugeny  would  recommend 
mating  with  the  scabby  Job,  yet  in  the 
Bible  we  read  that  "in  all  the  land  were 
no  women  found  so  fair  as  the  daughters 
of  Job." 

Richard  Gibson  was  court  dwarf  to 
Charles  I  of  England  and  became  a  noted 
miniature  painter.  Ann  Sheppard  was 
the  court  dwarf  to  Queen  Henrietta  Maria. 
These  mites  were  happily  married  and 
broke  an  established  opinion  that  dwarfs 
do  not  reproduce,  by  having  nine  chil- 
dren, five  of  whom  lived  to  maturity  and 
were  of  ordinary  stature. 

Professor  Preyer  in  1859  says  that 
mammae  occurred  on  the  back,  in  the  arm- 
pit, and  on  the  thigh;  the  mammae  on  the 
last  place  having  given  so  much  milk  that 
the  child  was  nourished. 

To  procure  future  husbands,  suitable  to 
the  altered  conditions  of  society,  cross 
with  Lemurs  some  of  whom  are  well 
known  to  have  two  pairs  of  mammae  on 


Mysteries  of  Conception  and  Gestation  33 

the  breast.  Dr.  Handyside  cites  a  case  in 
which  two  brothers  exhibited  this  peculi- 
arity. Dr.  Bartels  gives  an  instance  of 
a  man  who  had  five  mammae,  one  of  which 
was  located  above  the  navel.  The  scien- 
tists should  give  attention  to  the  develop- 
ment of  these  maternal  parts  of  the  male 
anatomy  as  in  the  event  of  a  general  suf- 
fragette triumph  they  would  become  very 
handy.  Much  cold  sjtudy  and  careful 
thought  should  be  given  to  the  subject  be- 
fore any  serious  move  is  made  towards  the 
development  of  the  one  located  above  the 
umbilicus. 

A  normal  and  favorable  gestatory  con- 
dition might  lead  to  the  elimination  of 
undesirables.  Nutrition,  mental  calm, 
comfort,  mode  of  dress,  social  habits,  and 
physical  activities  exert  a  mighty  influ- 
ence upon  the  young  before  parturition. 

Alcoholic,  syphilitic,  drug-charged  or 
disease-laden  sperm  will  rarely  produce 
prize-winners  at  a  beauty  show.  Circingle 
a  breeding  mare,  or  sow,  or  tighten  up  the 
corset-deformed  woman  of  the  present 
day,  during  gestation,  and  the  freaks  in 


34       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

museums  and  side-shows  will  be  mul- 
tiplied. 

If  the  eugenists  would  seriously  address 
themselves  to  the  correction  of  these  evils, 
they  would  be  most  welcome  in  our  midst. 

Sex-control  by  feeding  was  one  of  the 
fads  of  some  of  the  burnished  intel- 
lects of  the  past  who  occasionally  sug- 
gested to  the  Almighty,  but  the  prescrip- 
tion of  a  proteid  diet  to  produce  males,  a 
fatty  diet  for  females,  has  been  relegated 
to  the  realm  of  quackery,  though  it  was 
the  opinion  of  the  great  Verulam  that 
when  mothers  ate  quinces  and  coriander 
seed  the  children  would  be  witty. 

Plutarch  on  this  subject  says: 

We  find  that  women  who  take  physic 
whilst  they  are  with  child,  bear  leaner  and 
smaller  but  better  shaped  and  prettier 
children. 

It  has  been  announced  by  the  Child  Wel- 
fare Association  of  Pittsburgh,  that  beer 
and  bologna  are  two  of  the  causes  of  the 
crescent-shaped  underpinning  of  children 
in  that  city. 


Mysteries  of  Conception  and  Gestation  35 

It  has  also  been  observed  by  close  stu- 
dents that  black  hens  sometimes  lay  white 
eggs. 

It  is  claimed  that  Jacob  spotted  the  off- 
spring of  Laban's  sheep  and  goats  by  the 
timely  use  of  mottled  sticks. 

In  a  book  written  by  a  Christian  bishop, 
Heliodorus,  in  about  the  fourth  century, 
it  is  stated  that  "Chariclea  was  a  beautiful 
and  fair  virgin  of  Ethiopian  parents.  Her 
whiteness  was  occasioned  by  her  mother 
looking  on  a  statue  of  Venus." 

A  man  residing  in  New  York  kept  a 
cow  of  which  his  wife  was  very  fond ;  the 
cow  was  killed  and  sold  and  the  feet  re- 
served and  in  a  mangled  state  were  hung 
in  a  shed.  Upon  seeing  them,  the  wife 
who  was  then  pregnant  was  so  moved  and 
shocked  as  to  affect  the  child  in  such  a 
manner  that  he  was  born  without  any  arms 
and  with  distorted  feet,  and  for  pastime, 
when  a  youth,  he  dexterously  handled  a 
cooper's  shaving  knife  with  his  toes. 

In  Haddington's  Poems,  there  is  a  case 
called  the  Black  Case,  concerning  which 
the  story  recites : 


36       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

There  was  a  man  who  followed  the  pro- 
fession of  an  attorney,  .who  had  a  very 
amorous  wife.  But  he  had  not  leisure  to 
attend  to  all  of  her  gayeties.  Once,  that  he 
was  unable  otherwise  to  free  himself  from 
her  importunities,  in  toying  with  her,  he 
upset  his  ink-bottle  in  her  shoe.  She 
brought  him  a  black  child  in  consequence. 
He  reproached  her,  but  she  reminded  him 
of  the  ink-bottle,  and  of  his  awkwardness. 

Into  families  of  normal  children  a  giant 
or  dwarf  occasionally  drops. 

Among  the  noted  dwarfs,  the  earliest 
mentioned  was  Philetus  of  Cos,  330  B.C., 
a  poet  and  grammarian,  and  tutor  to 
Ptolemy  Philadelphus.  To  resist  the 
wind,  it  is  said,  his  clothes  were  weighted. 

Julia,  a  niece  of  Augustus,  had  as  a 
court  favorite  Coropas,  who  was  twenty- 
eight  inches  high,  also  Andromeda,  a  freed 
maid  of  the  same  height. 

Alypius  of  Alexandria,  logician  and 
philosopher,  was  seventeen  inches  in 
height. 

John  d'Estrix,  of  Mechlin,  master  of 
several  languages  and  about  three  feet 


Mysteries  of  Conception  and  Gestation  37 

tall,  lived  with  the  Duke  of  Parma  in 
1592. 

Geoffrey  Hudson,  as  a  social  stunt,  was 
served  up  in  a  cold  pie  by  the  Duchess  of 
Buckingham  before  Charles  I  and  Henri- 
etta Maria.  He  was  then  eighteen  inches 
tall,  and  in  1653  he  killed  a  man  in  a  duel. 

Count  Borowlaski  was  an  accomplished 
Pole,  thirty-nine  inches  in  height. 

Charles  S.  Stratton,  or  "  General  Tom 
Thumb,"  of  Barnum  fame,  was  a  Con- 
necticut Yankee,  thirty-one  inches  high, 
who  married  Lavina  Warren,  one  inch 
taller.  Their  wedding  tour  covered  parts 
of  Europe.  " Thumb,"  wife  and  child, 
with  a  dwarf,  Commodore  Nutt,  revisited 
England  in  1864. 

Mr.  Collard  at  twenty-two  years  of  age 
was  smaller  than  "Thumb,"  and  sang  in 
concerts  in  London  in  1873. 

"Bebe,"  the  dwarf  of  King  Stanislaus 
of  Poland,  was  twenty-three  inches  tall, 
and  in  1858  at  ninety  years  of  age  he  died 
in  Paris. 

Che-mah,  a  pigtail,  twenty-five  inches 
high,  was  exhibited  in  London  in  1880. 


38       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

Princess  Topaze,  a  French  lady,  was 
twenty  inches  high  and  weighed  fifteen 
pounds. 

General  Mite,  an  Irishman,  was  born  in 
New  York  State  in  1864.  His  height  was 
twenty-one  inches  and  weight  nine  pounds. 

Lucia  Zarate,  a  Mexican,  was  twenty 
inches  high  and  weighed  four  and  three- 
fourths  pounds. 

The  following  women  never  had  to  look 
up  to  any  neighboring  male : 

Elizabeth  Lyska,  a  Russian  lady,  who 
at  the  age  of  twelve  stood  six  feet  eight. 

Anna  Haven  Swann,  of  Nova  Scotia, 
was  seven  feet  in  the  clear. 

Marian,  the  "  Amazon  Queen, "  stood 
eight  feet  two  in  her  shoes. 

Among  men  specially  noted  for  their 
skin  capacity  was  the  Kentuckian,  Mar- 
tin Van  Buren  Bates,  with  seven  lineal 
feet  to  his  credit. 

Robert  Hales,  the  " Norfolk  Giant," 
was  seven  feet  six  and  weighed  four  hun- 
dred fifty-two  pounds. 

M.  Brice  was  the  same  height. 

Chang-Woo-Gaw,   eight   feet  tall,  ex- 


Mysteries  of  Conception  and  Gestation  39 

Mbited  in  London  in  1880 ;  and  Big  Sam, 
porter  of  Prince  of  Wales  (George  IV) 
was  also  eight  feet;  and  Gilly  of  Tyrol, 
was  about  eight  feet  one.  Frederick 
Swede,  of  Sweden,  and  Charles  Byrne 
were  each  eight  feet  four.  When  you  go 
abroad  call  on  Byrne's  skeleton  in  the 
Museum  of  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons. 

Patrick  Cotter,  the  " Irish  Giant,"  was 
born  in  1761,  measured  eight  feet  seven, 
and  wore  a  shoe  seventeen  inches  long. 

Joseph  Winkelmaier,  of  Austria,  had 
eight  feet  to  his  credit. 

John  Middleton,  the  " English  Giant," 
was  nine  feet  three,  and  from  the  heel  of 
his  hand  to  the  tip  of  his  middle  finger 
was  seventeen  inches. 

Calbara,  the  Arabian,  brought  to  Rome 
in  the  days  of  Claudius,  is  said  by  Pliny 
to  have  measured  nine  feet  and  nine 
inches. 

Emperor  Maximus  was  nearly  nine  feet 
and  of  vast  bulk. 

Goliath  of  Gath,  who  was  brought  to 
earth  by  the  stone  of  David,  was  "six  cu- 
bits and  a  span." 


40       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

Og,  King  of  Bashan,  in  1451  B.C.,  ac- 
cording to  Deuteronomy,  had  a  bed  nine 
cubits  long  and  four  cubits  wide. 

Peter,  the  Wild  Boy,  was  captured  by 
George  I  of  England  while  hunting  in  the 
forest.  He  was  about  thirteen  years  of 
age,  walked  on  his  hands  and  feet,  climbed 
trees  like  a  squirrel,  and  fed  on  grass  and 
moss  which  he  preferred  to  the  fare  of  the 
king's  table.  He  never  learned  to  speak 
a  single  word,  and  died  at  the  age  of  sev- 
enty years. 

"Baby  Jim"  Simons,  a  negro,  who  at 
the  age  of  thirty-seven  died  in  Philadel- 
phia in  1917,  weighed  eight  hundred 
pounds.  To  take  his  body  to  Texas  for 
burial  it  was  necessary  to  charter  an  entire 
freight  car. 

George  Bell,  a  seven-foot  eleven-inch 
colored  giant,  was  killed  by  his  common- 
law  wife  at  Milwaukee,  Wisconsin,  March 
19,  1919. 

The  Siamese  twins  were  united  at  the 
breast  bone  by  a  cartilaginous  hose 
through  which  the  umbilicus  passed.  They 


Mysteries  of  Conception  and  Gestation  41 

married  sisters — had  several  children — 
and  died  two  and  one-half  hours  apart. 

Twin  girls  were  born  in  Herkimer,  New 
York,  in  March,  1918,  and  though  fully 
developed  and  pretty  of  feature,  by  some 
freak  of  nature  they  were  joined  together 
from  the  chest  to  the  abdomen. 

On  October  12, 1918,  C.  Emery  Titman, 
the  son  of  a  deceased  millionaire  of  Phila- 
delphia, and  weighing  six  hundred  ten 
pounds  was  railroaded  to  White  Plains, 
New  York,  in  a  special  compartment,  and 
he  there  occupied  the  hospital  section  of 
the  White  Plains  jail,  as  he  could  not  be 
shoe-horned  into  any  of  the  cells. 

Jan  Van  Albert,  nineteen  years  of  age, 
and  nine  feet  five  inches  tall,  in  the 
month  of  April,  1920,  arrived  in  New 
York  City  on  the  Mauretania  from  Am- 
sterdam. It  is  claimed  for  him  that  he  is 
the  tallest  man  in  the  world. 

Is  more  needed  to  demonstrate  that  na- 
ture will  take  her  course,  or  leave  her 
course,  in  spite  of  what  man  willeth  ? 


CHAPTER  VI 

CONTROL  OF  OFFSPRING 

UNLESS  you  restrain  the  amative  male, 
offspring,  definitely,  cannot  be  controlled. 

It  must  be  apparent  to  even  the  fitful 
browser  along  the  highway  of  human  ac- 
tivities, that  men  in  every  social  station 
always  have  been,  and  always  will  be, 
sexual  rovers. 

Death  by  fire  for  adultery  did  not  deter 
the  intriguing,  twin-bearing  Thamar  from 
kid-bargaining  with  willing  King  Judah 
at  the  crossroads.  The  death  penalty  for 
adultery  failed  to  restrain  the  Jews ;  and 
one  thousand  blows  for  the  man  and  the 
loss  of  the  nose  of  the  woman  scarcely 
dented  the  practice  in  Egypt. 

Maternal  instinct  so  dominated  the  re- 
pulsive Leah  that  she  swopped  her  son's 
mandrakes  with  the  fair  Rachel  for  the 
loan  of  Jacob  for  a  single  night. 

42 


Control  of  Offspring  43 

Pharaoh  impounded  the  winsome  Sarah 
while  touring  Egypt  with  her  husband. 

Prince  Sheckem  deflowered  the  unwill- 
ing Dinah ;  and  the  sexual  scent  of  Reuben 
led  him  to  his  father's  concubine. 

No  student  of  anatomy  ever  ended  a 
more  bedraggled  career  than  the  jaw-bone 
warrior  Samson.  At  Timnath  his  genius 
subdued  an  ogling  Philistine ;  and  at  Gaza 
he  attracted  another  filly.  He  fell  at  the 
feet  of  Delilah,  the  bewildering  beauty  of 
the  valley  of  Sorek.  This  trained  and  se- 
ductive queen  of  tortion  nectared  his  lips, 
soothed  his  massive  anatomy,  and  so  fre- 
quently tempted  his  aphrodisiacal  yearn- 
ings that  exhausted  nature  finally  yielded 
her  secret. 

One  moonlit  zephyr-kissed  night  rest- 
less David  sought  the  palace  roof.  His 
trained  eye  fell  upon  Uriah's  wife  laving 
for  the  homecoming  of  her  spouse.  An 
unholy  fire  burned  in  his  soul  till  his  mes- 
sengers brought  her  to  him.  Soon  fitful 
slumber  mantled  the  great  king,  who  when 
he  awoke  sought  a  cinder  pile  on  which 


44       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

he  moaned  and  atoned  for  Ms  undying 
sins. 

The  Egyptian  kings,  Psammetichus  I 
and  Barneses  II,  the  Pharaoh  of  the  Is- 
raelite oppression,  following  the  example 
of  their  illustrious  gods,  married  their 
own  daughters. 

The  Achaemidian  kings  did  the  same, 
and  Artaxerxes,  king  of  Persia,  also  mar- 
ried two  of  his  own  daughters. 

The  handmaids  of  Leah  and  Rachel  gave 
Jacob  four  stray  sons. 

Amnon,  the  son  of  David,  feigning  sick- 
ness, converted  his  chamber  into  a  bakery, 
induced  his  beautiful  sister  Tamar  to 
take  charge,  then  raped  the  baker. 

Solomon,  the  owl  of  the  human  race, 
hooted  over  the  greatest  harem  that  it 
has  ever  been  the  misfortune  of  a  single 
man  to  assemble.  He  loved  many  strange 
women,  together  with  the  daughters  of 
Pharaoh,  women  of  the  Moabites,  Ammon- 
ites, Edomites,  Sidonians,  and  Hittites. 
A  thousand  women  called  him  "Sol." 

The  hoary  elders  of  the  people,  with 


Control  of  Offspring  45 

cockerel  energy,  chased  the  pullet  Susanna 
through  the  fence  of  her  garden. 

The  Romans,  without  rime  or  reason, 
seized  the  Sabine  women  and  bore  them 
away  on  the  pinions  of  lust. 

Philinna  the  dancer  gave  Philip  of 
Macedon  a  male  degenerate. 

The  posthumous  son  of  Roxanna  came 
from  the  loins  of  Alexander  the  Great. 

Nero  murdered  his  mother,  divorced 
Octavia,  married  his  mistress  Poppaea,  a 
woman  of  surpassing  beauty  and  of  broad 
sexual  training,  who  shod  her  mules  with 
gold  and  daily  bathed  in  the  milk  of  five 
hundred  asses,  and  went  to  eternity  on 
the  toe  of  Nero's  boot,  a  penalty  for 
thoughtless  gestation. 

Mundus  proffered  the  winsome  Paulina 
two  hundred  thousand  drachmae  to  sup 
and  lie  with  him  for  a  single  night. 

The  sexual  savagery  of  Tarquinius 
rendered  the  saintly  Lucretia  unconscious 
and  induced  suicide. 

After  the  angel  Gabriel  dropped  a  chap- 
ter of  the  Koran  exhorting  Mohammed 
freely  to  enjoy  his  captives  and  concu- 


46       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

bines  in  spite  of  his  wives'  clamors,  in  a 
solitary  retreat  for  thirty  days,  he  honey- 
mooned with  Mary  to  fulfill  the  command 
of  the  angel.  In  his  sexual  peregrinations 
the  cradle  and  the  tomb  alone  escaped 
him.  His  nuptials  with  Ayesha  were  con- 
summated at  the  close  of  her  ninth  year. 
He  would  have  been  equal  to  the  thirteenth 
labor  of  the  Grecian  Hercules. 

In  Ferrara,  "in  1425  a  Princess  was 
beheaded  for  adultery  with  a  stepson." 

When  Pius  II  came  to  Ferrara,  in  1459, 
he  was  received  by  seven  princes  not  one 
of  whom  was  a  legitimate  son. 

Giamf  aolo  Baglione  lived  in  incest  with 
his  sister. 

^neas  Sylvius  Piccalomini,  in  his  his- 
tory of  Frederick  III,  says :  "Most  of  the 
rulers  of  Italy  in  the  fifteenth  century 
were  born  out  of  wedlock." 

Francesco  Cenci  was  a  Roman  noble- 
man who  persecuted  his  beautiful  daugh- 
ter Beatrice  until  she  yielded  her  person, 
and  for  which  unnatural  crime  hired 
assassins  drove  a  nail  into  his  head  Sep- 
tember 9,  1599. 


Control  of  Offspring  47 

Casimir,  King  of  Poland,  whose  queen 
was  an  intolerable  shrew,  took  the  beauti- 
ful Esther,  a  Jewess,  to  fill  an  aching  void. 
Her  influence  with  the  King  secured  an 
enduring  toleration  for  her  people  and  the 
education  of  her  two  illicit  daughters  as 
Jewesses. 

Abrotonon,  proud  of  her  bastard  son, 
exclaimed : 

I  am  not  of  the  noble  Grecian  race, 
I  am  poor  Abrotonon,  and  born  in  Thrace : 
Let  the  Greek  women  scorn  me,  if  they  please, 
I  was  the  mother  of  Themistocles. 

The  passions  of  Caesar  broke  the  chains 
of  restraint  when  his  eyes  beheld  the 
unrugged  Cleopatra;  and  Antony  forgot 
his  Octavia  when  this  pile  of  voluptuous 
lust  amidst  bewildering  oriental  odors 
beckoned  him  to  her  boat  on  the  river 
Scydnus. 

Mazeppa,  immortalized  by  Byron,  and 
lavishly  endowed  by  nature,  pranced  be- 
fore the  alert  Theresa,  the  wife  of  the 
richest  count  in  Poland,  and  thirty  years 
his  junior.  A  spreading  chestnut  tree 
soon  drooped  from  the  heat  of  these  pant- 


48       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

ing  lovers,  and  wMle  Mazeppa  was  de- 
claiming : 

And  yet  I  find  no  words  to  tell 
The  shape  of  her  I  love  so  well, 

the  count's  guards  seized  and  bound  him 
to  the  wildest  horse  that  ever  kicked  sand 
on  a  desert.  With  nostrils  shooting  fire, 
he  split  the  winds,  leaped  the  mountains, 
spanned  the  plains,  till  he  dropped  with 
his  burden 

Bound,  naked,  bleeding  and  alone 
To  pass  the  desert  to  a  throne. 

Peter  the  Great  was  attracted  by  a 
peasant's  daughter,  while  the  mistress  of 
a  prince. 

The  "Grey-eyed  Queen"  Guinevere, 
wife  of  King  Arthur,  and  of  ravishing 
beauty,  shared  her  charms  with  Sir 
Lancelot  du  Lac  and  graced  the  free-love 
altars  of  other  seductive  males. 

Julius  Caesar  at  his  aunt's  funeral  said : 

My  aunt  Julia  derived  her  lineage  on 
her  mother's  side  from  a  race  of  kings  and 
on  her  father's  side  from  the  immortal 
gods;  for  her  mother's  family  trace  their 


Control  of  Offspring  49 

origin  to  King  Ancus  Martius,  and  her 
father's  to  Venus  of  whose  stock  we  are 
a  branch.  We  united  in  our  pedigree,  ac- 
cordingly, the  sacred  majesty  of  kings, 
who  are  the  most  exalted  among  men,  and 
the  divine  majesty  of  gods,  to  whom  kings 
themselves  are  subjects. 

Caesar's  descent  from  this  extravagant 
ancestry  failed  to  eliminate  from  his  na- 
ture the  sexual  restlessness  of  the  ordi- 
nary mortal.  Plutarch  says  of  him  that 
in  his  youth  he  had  been  very  intimate 
with  Servilia,  the  mother  of  Brutus,  and 
when  their  loves  were  at  their  highest, 
Brutus  was  born,  hence  Caesar  believed 
him  to  be  his  own  son. 

Henry  IV  of  France  madly  loved  the 
matchless  blond  Gabrielle,  who,  finally,  as 
mistress  bore  him  Caesar,  Alexander,  and 
Henrietta. 

The  third  Charles  of  France,  through 
Agnes  Sorel,  "the  fairest  of  the  fair," 
added  three  to  his  subjects. 

Rousseau  has  immortalized  Heloise,  the 
pupil  and  mistress  of  the  celebrated 
Abelard  who  was  eunuchated  at  the  in- 


50       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

stance  of  her  enraged  uncle.  They  sleep 
side  by  side  and  their  graves  are  fre- 
quently watered  by  pitying  and  pensive 
lovers. 

For  several  years  Voltaire  basked  in 
the  sensual  sunshine  of  Madame  du 
Chatelet,  noted  for  her  beauty,  talent,  and 
immoralities. 

Mirabeau,  French  orator  and  states- 
man, in  1776  left  his  wife  and  eloped  with 
an  adventuress,  for  which  he  was  con- 
demned to  death  but  released  after  four 
years  in  prison. 

Descartes  always  was  attracted  by 
women  with  a  squint  because  his  first 
mistress  was  cock-eyed. 

Goethe  loved  eight  different  women  of 
various  ranks,  among  them  a  married  one, 
and  finally  the  low-born  fascinating  Vul- 
pius  shared  his  bed  as  a  mistress. 

Charles  II  of  England  sighed  for  the 
orange  girl  and  actress  Nell  Gwynne, 
whose  bastard  son  by  him  was  made  Duke 
of  St.  Albans.  "Don't  let  poor  Nellie 
starve,"  were  the  last  words  of  this  sexual 
rover. 


Control  of  Offspring  51 

Mrs.  Mary  Robinson,  the  actress,  at- 
tracted the  attention  of  George  IV  of 
England  and  became  his  mistress. 

Fair  Rosamond,  the  daughter  of  Lord 
Clifford,  was  the  paramour  of  Henry  II. 
She  dwelt  in  a  secret  bower  known  only 
to  the  king,  which  he  reached  by  following 
a  silken  thread. 

Edward  III  of  England  quarreled 
with  his  parliament  and  saw  public  dis- 
content sap  the  loyalty  of  his  subjects 
while  he  wallowed  in  the  sensual  mire  of 
his  rapacious  mistress  Alice  Ferrers. 

George  IV,  when  Prince  of  Wales,  fed 
on  the  forbidden  thrills  of  Perdita,  the 
English  actress  and  rhymester. 

England's  first  "Defender  of  the 
Faith"  slightly  shaded  his  contempora- 
ries in  sexual  energy,  blood-letting  and 
nuptial-busting. 

Emma  Hamilton,  the  wife  of  a  tottering 
ambassador,  at  Naples,  fell  on  the  breast 
of  Lord  Nelson  in  a  paroxysm  of  hysteri- 
cal rapture.  She  was  a  woman  of  extreme 
beauty,  sexual  ardor,  shady  antecedents, 


52       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

the  mother  of  two  strays  by  a  navy  cap- 
tain and  of  one  by  Nelson. 

John  Howard,  England's  queer,  quaint, 
delicate,  and  studious  man,  who  reformed 
the  prisons  of  the  world,  died  while 
administering  medicines  to  the  poor 
wretches  in  Russian  hospitals,  and  whose 
memory  is  preserved  by  every  nation,  at 
the  age  of  twenty  married  a  lodging-house 
keeper  his  senior  by  thirty  years. 

Shelley,  the  English  poet,  married  an 
innkeeper's  daughter,  eloped  with  Miss 
Westbrook,  and  later  married  her,  soon 
left  her,  and  on  hearing  of  his  first  wife's 
suicide,  married  Mary  Godwin  with  whom 
he  was  globe-trotting  at  the  time. 

Emperor  Francis  Joseph  of  Austria 
matched  Hercules  in  judging  amative 
petticoat  tenants.  The  actress  Katharina 
Schratt  will  umbra  his  memory  so  long 
as  history  endures. 

The  O'Shea  rose  brought  to  her  couch, 
to  the  divorce  court,  to  dishonor,  and  to 
an  early  tomb,  the  great,  silent  Parnell. 

An  ex-king  of  Portugal,  now  reduced 
to  rabbit-raising  on  a  ten  acre  lot  in  Eng- 


Control  of  Offspring  53 

land,  lost  his  throne  through  startling 
dissipations,  and  princely  gifts  to  an  ac- 
tress. 

John  Rolfe,  nuptially  mixed  his  blood 
with  the  squaw,  Pocahontas,  and  from 
this  mongrel  fountain  the  Randolphs  and 
many  of  the  first  families  of  Virginia 
claim  descent. 

John  C.  Fremont,  the  first  nominee  of 
the  Republican  party  for  the  Presidency, 
and  Governor  of  Arizona,  eloped  with  the 
fifteen-year-old  daughter  of  Senator  Ben- 
ton. 

Croker,  of  Tammany  fame,  crossed  the 
shamrock  with  an  aboriginal  feather. 

The  Beecher-Tilton  mutual  yearnings 
is  only  an  instance  of  the  growing  number 
of  clerical  lapses. 

Now  comes  a  minister  of  St.  Louis, 
graduate  of  a  theological  seminary,  son  of 
a  distinguished  clergyman,  eloping  with, 
and  marrying,  an  eighteen-year-old  ne- 
gress,  and  still  no  great  poet  yells:  "Oh, 
Freedom,  thou  wicked  dream !" 

Pontano  plainly  suggests  that  a  wife 


54       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

had  better  shut  her  eyes  to  the  relations 
between  her  husband  and  her  maids. 

As  further  evidence  that  offspring 
cannot  be  controlled,  Mr.  Ellis  asserts: 

It  has  been  found  that  of  nearly 
15,000  women,  who  passed  through  Mag- 
dalen Homes  in  England,  over  2500  were 
definitely  feeble-minded.  The  women  be- 
longing to  this  feeble-minded  group  were 
known  to  have  added  1000  illegitimate 
children  to  the  population. 

If  bastardy  is  evidence  of  low  mental- 
ity, then  weaklings  among  England's 
females  are  as  numerous  as  Mosaic  lo- 
custs, for  the  public  press  has  recently 
estimated  that  200,000  illegitimates  is  the 
net  result  of  women  frequenting  the 
training  camps  of  the  soldiers. 

If  there  is  virtue  in  eugenics,  then 
there  is  hope  for  England  in  this  large 
spurious  increase,  as  these  low-brows 
were  mated  with  the  best  fighting  blood 
and  physical  flower  of  the  Empire. 

Some  of  these  children  of  love  may  yet 
straddle  the  woolsack  in  the  House  of 
Lords. 


Control  of  Offspring  55 

While  common  bastards  are  barred 
from  the  tables  of  royalty,  I  do  not  under- 
stand that  they  are  excluded  from  the 
trenches  of  the  warring  nations. 

In  his  history  of  the  Popes,  Pastor  says 
in  1490  there  were  6800  prostitutes  in 
Rome,  and  that  in  Venice  in  the  beginning 
of  the  sixteenth  century  there  were  not 
less  than  11,000  publicly  immoral  wo- 
men in  a  population  of  300,000. 

England's  man-made  religion,  founded 
by  a  sensualist,  has  finally  produced  a  ma- 
terialistic people  comparable  with  the 
Jewish  Sepulcher — fair  without  but  foul 
within — whose  genital  wanderings  pe- 
numbra the  best  efforts  of  pagan  Rome. 

Shed  the  light  of  your  own  experience 
upon  the  question  of  regulating  mating 
and  controlling  the  mated,  and  it  will  at 
once  appear  to  be  a  scientific  folly. 

These  human  frailties  are  not  disclosed 
and  collated  for  pastime  but  rather  in 
support  of  one  phase  of  a  very  far-reach- 
ing subject  which  has  engaged  the  atten- 
tion of  men  for  many  centuries  and  was 
ably  analyzed  by  the  Grecian  poet  Theog- 


56       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

nis  in  550  B.C.,  who  clearly  saw  the  advan- 
tage of  applied  selection  as  well  as  the 
futility  of  the  effort.  He  thus  wrote : 

With  kine  and  horses,  Kurnus !  we  proceed 

By  reasonable  rules,  and  choose  a  breed 

For  profit  and  increase,  at  any  price; 

Of  a  sound  stock,  without  defect  or  vice. 

But,  in  the  daily  matches  that  we  make, 

The  price  is  everything ;  for  money 's  sake 

Men  marry :  women  are  in  marriage  given : 

The  churl  or  ruffian  that  in  wealth  has  thriven, 

May  match  his  offspring  with  the  proudest  race; 

Thus  everything  is  mix  'd,  noble  and  base ! 

If  then  in  outward  manner,  form  and  mind, 

You  find  us  a  degraded,  motley  kind, 

Wonder  no  more,  my  friend !  the  cause  is  plain, 

And  to  lament  the  consequence  is  vain. 


CHAPTER  VII 

STERILIZATION 

STERILIZE  the  mentally  tainted  or  physi- 
cally impaired,  urges  the  Modernist,  to 
the  end  that  all  offspring  may  be  as  per- 
fect as  the  hothouse  Killarney  rose,  with 
physique  and  mentality  as  free  from  taint 
as  its  divinely  painted  face. 

Sterilization  should  never  be  permitted 
until  every  molecule  of  the  spermaceti  of 
the  victim  has  been  microscopically  ex- 
amined and  scientifically  developed  by 
some  of  God's  side-partners,  to  the  point 
of  definite  ascertainment  as  to  whether  in 
it  there  slumbers  a  germ  of  genius,  lest 
some  needed  being,  by  the  recklessness  of 
science,  be  lost  to  the  world. 

Who  can  successfully  contend  that 
there  was  any  inherent  tendency  to  mur- 
der in  Cain ?  That  which  we  call  jealousy 
sleeps  under  the  skin  of  every  rational 

57 


58       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

being.  Its  intensity  depends  upon  the 
strength  of  the  being  harboring  it  and  the 
degree  of  provocative  stimulant  which  un- 
chains its  fury. 

If  a  surgical  switch  had  been  put  in 
Cain's  seminal  railway  because  he  origi- 
nated fratricide,  then  Jabal,  the  father 
of  tent-dwellers  and  cattle-herders;  and 
Jubal,  the  progenitor  of  harpists  and  or- 
ganists, and  Tubal  Cain,  the  instructor  of 
artificers  in  brass  and  iron,  all  would  have 
taken  the  switch  and  still  be  lying  in  the 
wreckage  by  the  roadside  of  anthropologic 
folly. 

The  votaries  of  a  perfect  race  would 
knock  on  the  head  all  such  defectives  as 
were  denied  holy  orders  by  the  Mosaic  law 
governing  candidates  for  the  priesthood, 
which  provided  that : 

Whatsoever  man  he  be  that  hath  a 
blemish,  he  shall  not  approach;  a  blind 
man,  or  a  lame,  or  he  that  hath  a  flat  nose, 
or  anything  superfluous,  or  a  man  that  is 
brokenfooted,  or  brokenhanded  or  bone- 
headed,  or  crookbackt,  or  a  dwarf,  or 
that  hath  a  blemish  in  his  eye,  or  be 


Sterilization  59 

scurvy,  or  scabbed,  or  hath  his  stones 
broken,  shall  not  come  nigh  to  offer  the 
bread  of  the  Lord. 

Until  the  wild  men  of  science  can  tell 
us  why  it  is  that  perfect  eyes,  cock  eyes, 
squint  eyes,  watch  eyes,  sore  eyes;  pert 
ears,  lopped  ears,  no  ears,  cauliflower 
ears;  well  formed,  humpbacked;  knock 
knees,  bow  legs,  clump  feet;  high  brows, 
low  brows;  straight  noses,  convex  noses, 
concave  noses,  flat  noses,  snub  noses ;  black 
hair,  golden  hair,  auburn  hair,  red  hair, 
straight  hair,  curly  hair;  idiotic,  deaf, 
dumb,  blind,  epileptic,  bright,  sane,  crazy, 
large,  small,  powerful,  weak,  thugs, 
thieves,  freaks,  murderers,  sinners,  devils, 
and  saints  may  gestate  in  the  same  womb, 
they  had  better  roll  the  edge  on  the  steril- 
ization knife. 

The  following  stars  in  the  intellectual 
firmament  have  been  scientifically  classed 
as  semi-insane ;  hence,  if  now  in  the  flesh, 
would  be  proper  subjects  for  the  surgery. 

Gerard  de  Nerval,  political  writer  and 
poet,  from  his  youth  was  a  mystic,  a 


60       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

believer  in  the  occult,  a  noctambulist, 
drinker,  nomad,  bohemian,  and  the  most 
precocious  youth  of  his  time,  who  dragged 
a  live  lobster  at  the  end  of  a  blue  ribbon 
about  the  Palais  Royal  and  hung  himself 
in  a  brothel,  probably  with  a  garter  of  the 
Queen  of  Sheba. 

The  gifted  Baudelaire,  whose  writings 
were  deodorized  by  the  police,  exclaimed : 
"My  soul  soars  upon  perfumes  as  the 
souls  of  other  men  soar  upon  music. " 
Only  the  stench  of  putrefaction  gave  him 
olfactory  delight.  Before  his  death  he 
dyed  his  hair  green  and  took  a  strangle 
hold  on  his  father-in-law. 

Tolstoy,  at  eight  years  of  age,  was 
seized  with  a  wild  desire  to  fly.  From  his 
window  sill  he  beat  the  air  with  his  f  eath- 
erless  wings  and  a  fall  of  sixteen  feet 
physically  unfitted  him  if  it  did  not  con- 
vince him  of  the  futility  of  an  early  re- 
newal of  the  effort.  He  reasoned  that  a 
man  accustomed  to  pain  could  never  be 
unhappy ;  hence,  to  bring  sunlight  into  his 
somber  life  he  would  hold  a  large  dic- 
tionary upon  his  outstretched  arm  for  five 


Sterilization  61 

minutes,  or  in  the  barn  would  scourge  his 
back  with  a  rope  till  the  tears  came  to  his 
eyes.  Because  of  these  eccentricities  it  is 
claimed  that  this  noted  Russian  novelist 
was  semi-insane.  This  genius  may  have 
been  cracked  but  through  the  crack  moved 
an  intellectual  light  so  intense  as  to  draw 
the  scholars  of  the  world  to  his  writings. 

Pascal,  before  the  close  of  his  first  year, 
nearly  died  of  languor  charged  to  the  in- 
fluence of  a  sorceress  who  consented  to  his 
relief  by  casting  the  spell  upon  a  cat  which 
was  thrown  from  a  window  and  killed  by 
the  fall.  To  complete  his  cure,  at  about 
the  age  of  seven  years,  there  were  gath- 
ered by  the  sorceress,  before  sunrise,  nine 
leaves  of  three  different  kinds  of  herbs 
which  were  worked  into  a  poultice  and 
placed  upon  the  child's  stomach. 

From  childhood  he  could  not  endure  the 
sight  of  water  without  falling  into  a  fit  of 
passion,  nor  could  he  bear  to  see  his  father 
and  mother  together. 

From  his  eighteenth  year  he  never 
spent  a  painless  day.  Partial  paralysis 
below  the  waist,  with  inability  to  swallow 


62       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

liquid  except  hot  and  then  only  one  drop 
at  a  time,  together  with  volcanic  head- 
aches, incessant  heart  burn,  and  many 
lesser  comforting  ills  for  all  of  which 
Descartes  bled,  bathed,  and  purged  him 
till  his  life  was  endangered.  He  wrote 
out  a  vision  of  a  runaway  and  sewed  it  in 
his  clothes,  and  ever  wore  around  his 
body  an  iron  girdle  set  with  sharp  points 
which  he  would  press  into  his  flesh  on 
the  approach  of  temptation  or  broken 
thoughts.  Towards  the  close  of  his  life 
at  times  he  lost  his  speech  and  conscious- 
ness and  was  afflicted  with  vertigo  and 
convulsions.  An  autopsy  disclosed  cavi- 
ties filled  with  putrefied  blood.  The  medi- 
frontal  suture  still  open  was  regarded  by 
most  anthropologists  as  a  mark  of  mental 
superiority.  The  great  size 'of  his  brain 
led  the  physicians  to  believe  that  it  pre- 
vented the  frontal  suture  from  closing. 

He  came  into  the  world  without  ances- 
tral taint  and  was  sired  by  a  man  of  high 
character  and  pronounced  capacity.  In 
profundity  of  thought,  grace  of  expres- 
sion, wisdom  of  diction,  flaying  irony,  and 


Sterilization  63 

keenness  of  thrust,  he  stands  out  as  the 
central  figure  in  the  great  galaxy  of  intel- 
lectual luminaries  that  France  has  given 
to  the  world. 

What  surgically  trained  Ishmaelite 
shall  say  that  the  fountains  of  this  mighty 
genius  should  have  been  dried  by  steriliza- 
tion, or  that  he  should  have  been  allowed 
to  die,  while  in  a  decline,  during  his  first 
year? 

The  muckers  of  science  place  Mozart, 
the  beacon  light  of  harmony,  among  the 
semi-insane  because  at  the  age  of  ten  he 
would  flee  from  a  trumpet,  and  if  pur- 
sued, would  hide. 

We  have  all  heard  buglers  capable  of 
arousing  the  microbe  of  insanity.  A  fur- 
ther scientific  ground  was  urged  that  at 
the  age  of  fifteen  he  fell  in  love  with  a  girl 
ten  years  his  senior  but  did  not  add  that 
he  married  her  younger  sister  by  whom  he 
had  two  sons. 

Mozart  composed  179  works  and  died  at 
the  age  of  thirty-five  years.  His  operas 
Don  Giovanni,  The  Magic  Flute  and 
Figaro  will  endure  until  the  harmony  of 


64       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

the  world  shall  be  thrown  into  chaos  b}' 
the  bugle  call  to  judgment.  This  bulging 
genius  played  the  harpsichord  at  three, 
composed  concertos  at  five,  and  conducted 
a  concert  tour  at  six.  He  flashed  his- 
dying  soul  into  an  unfinished  Requiem, 
which  remains  a  noble  monument  to  his 
poverty-hampered  genius.  No  friendly 
eye  saw  his  remains  covered.  His  wife 
could  not  find  his  grave.  Vienna  let  him 
starve  but  finally  erected  a  beautiful 
monument  upon  his  empty  stomach. 

Beethoven  stood  five  feet  five  inches 
high,  very  broad  and  strongly  built,  with 
large  head  thickly  coated  with  black  hair, 
with  dark,  very  bright,  peculiar  eyes.  His 
father  was  of  a  tempestuous  temper  and 
led  an  irregular  life  and  sang  tenor  in  a 
band  for  twenty-five  pounds  a  year.  His 
mother  was  so  ordinary  that  she  has  been 
referred  to  as  of  no  account.  They  say 
he  was  deaf  at  thirty,  a  very  eccentric 
character,  a  genial  disorder  reigned  in  his 
mind;  he  washed  in  ice  water  and  used 
several  pitchers  of  it  for  his  toilet,  dash- 
ing it  on  his  hair  and  face  without  notic- 


Sterilisation  65 

ing  that  it  made  a  pool  on  the  floor  in 
which  he  splashed  like  a  duck  and  con- 
stantly scolded.  When  hot-headed  he 
plunged  his  cranium  into  ice  water  to 
mitigate  the  heat,  and  in  the  heart  of  the 
woods  spent  days,  composing,  with  his 
head  bared  to  the  dampness  and  storms. 
Still  his  genius  gave  to  music  a  strength, 
breadth,  depth  of  color,  and  a  beauty  be- 
fore unknown  to  the  world.  Living  in  a 
profligate  city  at  a  time  of  unmuzzled 
morals,  and  himself  singularly  attractive 
to  women,  yet  his  name  was  never  shaded 
by  a  single  scandal.  He  said:  "It  is  one 
of  my  first  principles  never  to  stand  in 
any  relation  but  those  of  friendship  with 
another  man's  wife."  Princes,  cardinals, 
beautiful,  clean  intellectual  women,  like 
Rahel,  and  men  like  Goethe  were  his  com- 
panions. This  moral  man  of  the  widest 
musical  intellectual  sweep  is  classed 
amongst  the  semi-insane  by  scientific 
"hags"  who,  like  Jacob,  seek  to  draw  at- 
tention to  themselves  by  attacking  angels. 
St.  Paul,  the  heavy  weight  of  early 
Christianity,  has  been  classed  as  an 


66       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

epileptic.  The  evidence  against  Mm  seems 
to  be  that  he  held  the  garments  of  the 
assassins  of  St.  Stephen;  on  the  road  to 
Damascus  a  Heavenly  light  clothed  him 
and  for  three  days  he  was  without  food, 
drink  or  sight ;  he  escaped  from  the  walls 
of  Damascus  in  a  basket ;  collided  with  St. 
Peter  at  Antioch;  failed  in  his  defense 
before  Agrippa  by  appealing  to  Csesar; 
talked  himself  into  many  jails ;  frequently 
wrote  epistles  to  strange  peoples  that  were 
never  answered;  had  a  mania  for  tramp- 
ing, preaching,  flaying  hypocrites,  rib- 
roasting  the  Jews,  and  a  very  marked 
carelessness  in  the  use  of  language  when 
denouncing  sinners, — all  of  which  cul- 
minated in  his  arrest  and  led  to  his  execu- 
tion by  Nero  as  a  felon. 

Rossini,  the  son  of  a  town  trumpeter 
and  inspector  of  slaughter  houses,  stands 
at  the  head  of  Italian  composers  for  the 
stage.  In  Vienna  his  music  and  attractive 
personality  raised  a  wave  of  popularity 
which  swept  everything  before  it.  Paris 
gave  him  such  a  cordial  reception  and 
storm  of  applause  that  he  resolved  again 


Sterilisation  67 

to  see  her  vivacious  and  appreciative  peo- 
ple. The  king  and  aristocracy  of  England 
with  open  arms  extended  to  him  a  most 
generous  welcome.  In  nineteen  years  he 
wrote  thirty-six  operas,  and  William  Tell 
is  the  one  most  likely  to  endure.  He  is 
classed  among  the  irrational  and  his  mem- 
ory blackened  because  at  times  he  wept, 
despaired,  complained  of  cold  hands  and 
sleeplessness;  and  because  he  once  said: 
"I  feel  all  the  miseries  of  a  woman,  the 
only  thing  that  I  lack  is  a  uterus." 

Edgar  Allen  Poe  is  classed  as  a  psychic 
degenerate  because  he  drank  like  a  savage, 
had  delirium  tremens,  would  drink  liquor 
without  water  or  sugar,  and  gulp  it  down 
without  tasting  it;  that  his  life  was  one 
dark  sob,  and  that  the  paralyzing  terror 
in  all  of  his  stories  evidenced  his  madness. 

"The  Raven,"  "The  Bells,"  "The  City 
in  the  Sea,"  and  "Lenore,"  are  not  strag- 
gling poetic  flowers,  which,  by  chance, 
sprang  up  in  the  crevices  of  a  whisky- 
cracked  brain.  Only  Emerson  and  Lowell 
contest  his  poetical  primacy.  Edwin 
Markham  says  of  him  that  he  "is  the  most 


68       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

tragic  figure  in  our  literary  history  and 
the  figure  that  casts  from  our  shores  the 
longest  shadow  across  the  world.  He  was 
a  great  intellect  and  a  sad  heart. ' ' 

I  would  rather  be  the  author  of  "The 
Raven"  than  of  all  the  spew  that  has 
dripped  from  the  brains  of  all  of  the  sex- 
ologists and  anthropologists  who  .  have 
delved  in  the  frailties  of  man  since  frogs 
leaped  into  Pharaoh's  soup.  In  death  his 
lips  moved  for  the  last  time  upon  these 
sanctifying  words:  "Lord,  save  my  poor 
soul!" 

The  critics  of  this  immortal  genius  in 
prose  and  verse,  compared  with  him,  are 
as  mud-balls  "stuck  on  the  radiant  front 
of  the  rainbow." 

Frederick  II  of  Germany,  at  the  age 
of  eighteen,  wrested  the  imperial  crown 
from  Otto  IV ;  spoke  seven  languages  and 
was  one  of  the  first  to  write  Italian  poems ; 
he  was  a  patron  of  the  arts  and  a  diligent 
student  of  national  science.  Intellectu- 
ally he  was  perhaps  the  most  enlightened 
man  of  his  age ;  still  he  is  classed  as  semi- 
insane  because  he  had  such  a  dislike  for 


Sterilisation  69 

changing  his  coat  that  he  did  not  have 
more  than  two  or  three  during  his  life. 

The  following  noted  men  have  been 
shadowed  mentally  by  scientific  cynics 
who  never  see  a  good  quality  in  a  man  and 
never  fail  to  see  a  bad  one: 

Schiller,  because  when  meditating  he 
would  put  his  feet  on  ice  and  sniffed  the 
aroma  of  decaying  apples,  which  he  kept 
in  his  bureau  drawer  for  that  pur- 
pose. 

Paisiello  could  not  compose  unless  he 
was  wrapped  in  six  blankets  in  the  sum- 
mer and  nine  in  the  winter. 

Byron  had  an  attack  of  convulsions 
when  he  heard  Kean  recite,  and  some- 
times imagined  that  a  ghost  visited  him. 

Darwin  seems  to  have  suffered  from 
serious  chronic  neurasthenia,  and  at  one 
time  from  monkey-mania. 

Chopin's  affliction  was  extreme  ner- 
vousness, which  so  affected  him  that  the 
merest  trifle,  the  wrinkle  in  a  rose  leaf, 
or  the  shadow  of  a  fly  would  make  him 
bleed. 

Van  Helmot  had  the  aid  of  a  spirit  in 


70       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

all  important  matters  and  looked  upon 
his  own  soul  as  a  resplendent  crystal. 

Richard  Wagner  was  a  degenerate  be- 
cause his  writings  show  incoherence, 
flight  of  ideas,  and  a  tendency  towards 
silly  puns. 

Berlioz  failed  to  coordinate  mentally 
and  kicked  his  guitar,  then  grabbed  his 
pistol  to  end  all  because  his  thoughts 
failed  to  flow  freely.  Intestinal  neural- 
gia wore  him  down  and  epileptic  con- 
vulsions preceded  his  death. 

Lombroso  says  that  the  list  of  great 
men  who  have  ended  their  lives  is  inter- 
minable, and  he  classes  as  epileptics 
Moliere,  called  by  Voltaire  the  father  of 
French  comedy ;  Julius  Caesar,  the  greatest 
military  commander  of  his  time,  peerless 
as  a  politician  and  statesman,  and  virtu- 
ally the  founder  of  the  Roman  Empire; 
Petrarch,  crowned  poet  laureate  of  Italy 
in  the  capitol  in  Rome  and  died  sitting 
among  his  books  July  18,  1374 ;  Peter  the 
Great,  Czar  of  Russia,  who  founded  St. 
Petersburg  on  a  bog,  married  his  mistress, 
changed  the  manners  of  the  Russians  and 


Sterilization  71 

filled  their  lives  with  industry,  and  when 
drunk  with  wine  would  strike  off  twenty 
heads  in  succession  to  show  his  dexterity 
with  the  sword. 

Napoleon,  whose  genius  shook  the  earth, 
suffered  from  an  habitual  twitching  of  the 
right  shoulder  and  of  the  lips.  He  be- 
lieved in  presentiments  and  horoscopes, 
credited  sorcerers  who  promised  good  for- 
tune, despaired  when  he  broke  a  mirror, 
was  superstitious  about  Friday  and  the 
number  13,  and  the  letter  m  he  considered 
fatal. 

Grasset,  in  his  work  on  the  semi-insane, 
classes  Newton  as  a  demi  fou,  which  in 
popularized  English  means  a  "damn 
fool,"  and  that  he  became  insane  in  his 
old  age,  the  evidence  being  that  he  deliv- 
ered fantastic  lectures,  clenched  his  fists 
while  driving,  defied  Villars  and  chal- 
lenged him  to  fight,  wrote  obscure  letters, 
became  melancholic,  had  been  absent- 
minded  all  of  his  life,  and  that  the  illustri- 
ous astronomer  suffered  from  dementia  in 
1694. 

Newton,  the  greatest  of  natural  philoso- 


72       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

pliers,  was  born  in  1642,  the  year  of  Ga- 
lileo 's  death.  He  succeeded  to  the  Mathe- 
matical Professorship  of  Trinity  College 
and  delivered  a  course  of  optical  lectures 
in  Latin  at  the  age  of  twenty-five  years. 
A  new  telescope  was  invented  by  him. 
The  incident  of  a  falling  apple  brought 
from  his  wonderful  mind  the  marvelous 
law  of  universal  gravitation.  He  was  a 
master  of  the  mint,  twice  a  member  of 
Parliament,  knighted  by  Queen  Anne  and 
at  his  death  had  been  president  of  the 
Royal  Society  for  twenty-five  years. 

In  1696,  two  years  after  his  alleged  de- 
mentia it  is  recorded  in  Chambers'  Ency- 
clopedia, that  "in  the  interval  of  public 
duty,  however,  Newton  showed  that  he  still 
retained  the  scientific  power  by  which  his 
great  discoveries  had  been  made.  This 
was  shown  in  his  solution  of  two  celebrated 
problems  prepared  in  June,  1696,  by  John 
Bernouilli,  as  a  'challenge  to  the  mathe- 
maticians of  Europe.' 

A  similar  mathematical  feat  is  recorded 
of  him  as  late  as  1716,  and  at  the  age  of 
seventy-four  years. 


Sterilization  73 

On  these  facts  I  much  prefer  to  be 
classed  with  the  Newtons  than  with  the 
nut-cracking  alienists  and  professors  who 
are  ever  ready  to  bedevil  a  human  being 
for  the  beckoning  dollar. 

Mohammed  before  his  sixth  year  lost 
both  of  his  parents  and  was  the  victim 
of  poverty  and  fits.  In  his  tenth  year  he 
entered  the  service  of  a  rich  widow,  as  a 
camel-driver,  who,  though  fifteen  years 
his  senior  and  the  survivor  of  two  hus- 
bands, offered  him  her  hand,  which  he  took 
and  grew  a  long  beard  and  cultivated  a 
black  mole  between  his  shoulders  which 
later  was  looked  upon  by  his  followers  as 
"the  seal  of  prophecy." 

At  forty  years  of  age  in  the  solitude  of 
Mt.  Hira  he  nursed  an  inclination  to  teach 
a  new  faith  as  a  substitute  for  idolatry, 
narrow  Judaism,  and  a  corrupt  Chris- 
tianity. 

Like  Isaac,  Moses,  Baalam,  Paul,  Joan 
of  Arc,  Bloody  Mary,  and  Joseph  Smith, 
Mohammed  was  honored  by  divine  visita- 
tions. 

Whether  divinity  was  present  or  actu- 


74       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

ally  represented  in  each  case,  is  still  a 
mooted  question. 

Some  dogmatic  inquirers  have  sug- 
gested that  these  visions  may  have  been 
the  children  of  hysteria,  fright,  dyspepsia, 
or  ambitious  cunning. 

What  Mohammed  had  conceived  after 
a  long,  painful,  and  solitary  confinement 
he  finally  brought  forth  amidst  such  fear- 
fully exultant  physical  vehemence  that 
during  his  revelations  his  eyes  shot  blood, 
his  lips  foamed,  and  he  steamed  with 
sweat. 

This  book-made  lunatic  fought  super- 
stition, the  killing  of  newborn  daughters, 
gambling  and  usury,  exhorted  the  people 
to  pious  moral  lives,  and  to  the  belief  in 
an  all-mighty,  all-wise,  everlasting,  indi- 
visible, all- just  God,  the  throne  of  whose 
mercy  could  be  reached  principally 
through  fasting,  almsgiving  and  prayer. 
In  the  zenith  of  his  power  he  lived  in  a 
miserable  hut,  freed  his  slaves,  and 
mended  his  own  breeches. 

In  a  civil-service  test  for  humility  and 
contempt  of  the  world  he  would  outclass 


Sterilisation  75 

any  disciple  who  ever  cussed  fish  on  the 
Sea  of  Galilee. 

Freeing  him  from  the  sins  and  errors  of 
his  successors,  and  taking  him  all  in  all, 
human  history  records  the  achievements 
of  but  few  more  earnest,  noble  and  sin- 
cere " prophets,"  men  irresistibly  led  by 
an  inside  voice  to  preach,  teach  and  warn, 
and  to  throw  into  the  teeth  of  the  world 
sublime  truths  not  fully  comprehended 
by  themselves. 

If,  however,  Mohammed  were  on  trial 
for  murder  in  this  day,  the  lobcock  alien- 
ists, who  prance  on  the  mental  horizon  for 
hire,  would  affirm  that  the  fastigium  of 
his  intellectuality  had  irrevocably  slipped 
into  the  storm  center  of  irremediable  mad- 
ness. 

Like  hounds,  they  often  take  the  wrong 
scent  and  cry  out  along  a  false  trail, 
never  perceiving  their  fault. 

The  noted  Thaw  was  the  victim  of  the 
monetary  alienist  Flint,  who,  consciously 
or  through  olfactory  defectiveness,  for 
years  bayed  along  the  trail  of  this  alleged 
paranoiac.  That  they  are  not  dependable 


76       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

was  shown  in  the  last  trial  of  Thaw  at 
which  Dr.  Flint  called  upon  the  court  to 
save  his  great  mind  from  the  hypnotic 
powers  of  his  victim. 

These  are  only  a  few  of  the  intellectual 
lights  that  shine  in  the  window  of  time, 
who  have  been  classed  as  defectives  by 
alienists. 

By  all  the  gods  and  bobtailed  chickens 
that  infest  mythology  and  the  barnyard, 
I  most  solemnly  affirm  that  no  sane  man  is 
safe  who  has  ever  stepped  on  one  of  the 
Ten  Commandments,  should  he  fall  under 
the  paid  observation  of  any  of  these  scien- 
tific vultures. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

STANDARD 

CONCEDE  that  mating  can  be  controlled 
to  the  point  of  matrimony,  then,  I  ask  by 
what  standard  shall  fitness  be  determined  ? 
Will  intellect,  physical  lines,  and  pedi- 
gree govern  as  among  breeding  animals'? 
Will  honesty,  sense,  and  soundness,  di- 
vested of  dowery,  take  the  applicants  past 
the  censor  ? 

Plutarch  says:  " Seldom  honesty  and 
beauty  dwell  together." 

If  physical  perfection  shall  be  the  pri- 
mary requirement,  the  animal  in  man  will 
soon  dominate  the  intellect  and  we  will 
ultimately  have  a  race  of  gobblers  and 
stallions  uproariously  displaying  their 
charms  before  their  queens.  If  an  attrac- 
tive stalwart  physique,  with  such  brain  as 
chance  may  have  lodged  in  it,  shall  finally 
become  the  standard,  then  it  will  follow  as 

77 


78       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

the  night  the  day  that  genius  must  sleep 
alone. 

Physical  abbreviation  and  imperfec- 
tions have  attended  many  of  the  most 
noted  men  of  the  world. 

How  many  deformed  or  physically  de- 
fective princes,  kings,  emperors,  poets, 
prophets,  philosophers,  statesmen,  musi- 
cians, orators,  generals,  and  wits  could  I 
enumerate  ? 

When  that  little,  lean,  poor,  dejected  fa- 
mous preacher  in  Italy,  Cornelius  Mussus, 
stepped  into  the  pulpit  in  Venice  the  peo- 
ple were  about  to  depart.  He  threw  his 
beautiful  voice  into  their  ears  and  with 
his  wealth  of  intellect  soon  doped  them 
into  an  admiring  spell-bound  aggregation. 
Happy  was  the  senator  who  could  sit  in 
his  company  or  have  him  at  his  home. 

Hannibal  had  but  one  eye;  Muleasse, 
King  of  Tunis;  John,  King  of  Bohemia; 
Tiresias,  the  prophet;  Appius  Claudius; 
Timoleon  and  Homer,  were  blind.  An- 
gelus  Politianus  had  a  leaking  tetter  in 
his  nose,  yet  he  wrote  in* words  of  gold; 
Socrates  was  hairy,  long-legged  and  pur- 


Standard  79 

blind;  Democritus,  shriveled;  Seneca, 
harsh,  lean,  and  ugly  to  the  eye ;  Horace, 
a  red-eyed  shrimp ;  ^Esop,  deformed ;  Mel- 
anchthon,  a  short  hard-favored  man ;  Mar- 
silius  Ficinus  and  Faber  Stapulensis  were 
dwarfs;  Galba,  the  emperor,  had  spinal 
curvature ;  Epictetus  was  lame,  and  Lord 
Byron,  club-footed;  the  great  Alexander 
and  Augustus  Caesar  were  sawed  off ;  Na- 
poleon was  called  "Puss  in  Boots" ;  Pope 
measured  less  than  five  feet;  Agesilaus 
was  mean  in  form;  Prince  Boccharis 
physically  was  the  crookedest  and  men- 
tally the  wisest  of  Egypt's  royal  blood. 

The  pigmy  King  of  Poland,  Uladeslaus 
Cubitalis,  fought  more  battles  and  won 
more  victories  than  any  stalwart  predeces- 
sor who  ever  strode  a  horse. 

Zacchaeus,  the  only  rich  sinner  honored 
at  lunch  by  the  Savior's  presence,  was  so 

nail  that  he  viewed  his  Master's  ap- 
proach from  the  crotch  of  a  sycamore. 

"The  Great  Commoner,"  the  sickly  and 
club-footed  Thaddeus  Stevens,  walked 
from  humble  obscurity  to  a  seat  in  Con- 
gress. 


80       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

Yet  show  me  so  many  wits  and  such 
divine  spirits  in  any  other  intellectual  as- 
semblage. 

Sottish,  dull,  and  leaden  minds  are  usual 
in  large  bodies  and  comely  features. 

Fat  and  fame  are  not  often  covered  by 
the  same  skin.  About  the  only  great 
statesman  one  can  recall  who  was  really 
a  fat  man  was  Charles  J.  Fox,  as  can  be 
seen  by  his  effigy  in  the  palace  of  West- 
minster. He  would  make  three  of  his 
great  rival  Pitt  the  younger. 

The  only  fat  poet  one  can  recall  is  Jamie 
Thompson,  the  author  of  "The  Seasons." 
He  was  a  comfortable,  lazy,  slovenly  man, 
of  whom  it  is  related  that  he  would  eat 
peaches  off  the  tree,  not  taking  the  trouble 
to  take  his  hands  out  of  his  pockets  to 
pluck  them.  Yet,  despite  his  lazy  dispo- 
sition, he  managed  to  write  one  of  the 
longest  of  English  poems  as  well  as  "The 
Castle  of  Indolence,"  a  castle  in  which  he 
habitually  dwelt. 

When  ominous  clouds  were  hovering 
above  the  head  of  Cassar,  he  said  to  his 
trusty  friend,  Antonius; 


Standard  81 

Let  me  have  men  about  me  that  are  fat: 
Sleek-headed  men  and  such  as  sleep  o'  nights: 
Yon  Cassius  has  a  lean  and  hungry  look; 
He  thinks  too  much :  such  men  are  dangerous. 

In  the  material  world  a  small  diamond 
is  worth  more  than  a  granite  block. 

If  physical  perfection  is  sought,  the 
lofty  idealists  might  profitably  dwell  upon 
the  fact  that  there  has  been  little  physical 
progress  in  our  species  for  many  thou- 
sands of  years.  The  Cro-Magnon  race 
which  lived  perhaps  twenty  thusand 
years  ago  was  at  least  equal  to  any  modern 
people  in  size  and  strength,  and  some  of 
the  so-called  unprogressive  races,  as  the 
Zulus,  Samoans  and  Tahitians,  are  even 
to-day  envied  by  the  people  of  the  white 
race  for  strength  and  beauty. 

The  minds  of  men  may  be  likened  to 
wood,  metal,  and  stone,  in  that  some  read- 
ily yield  to  the  burnisher,  while  the  vast 
majority  remain  dull  in  the  hands  of  the 
most  gifted  artisan. 

The  belchers  of  wind  and  words  may 
blindly  struggle  on,  but  unavailingly,  as 
they  will  find  their  every  effort  environed 
by  unyielding,  God-given,  natural  laws. 


CHAPTER  IX 

INTELLECTUALS  GENERALLY  UNFERTILE 

THE  sexologists  who  seek  to  mate  "  in- 
tellectuals" know  that  thereby  they  can 
limit  offspring  and  spare  the  wealthy, 
socially  inclined  the  burden  and  incon- 
venience of  children  and  without  sexual 
restrictions  because  of  the  well-known  law 
laid  down  by  Ellis  that  "in  the  races  and 
also  among  animals  generally,  fertility  di- 
minishes as  the  organism  becomes  highly 
developed." 

That  matchless  mind  and  divine  favor- 
ite, Moses,  so  ran  to  intellect  that  he  early 
soured  on  matrimony  and  sent  his  wife  to 
her  father  that  his  time  might  be  given 
to  plaguing  Pharoah,  legislating  against 
idolatry  and  adultery,  evolving  a  sanitary 
system  of  diet,  foot  baths,  and  whiskers, 
expounding  his  ten  rules  of  salvation, 

82 


Intellectuals  Generally  Unfertile    83 

regulating  the  quail  and  manna  supply 
and  clubbing  waiter  from  tearless  rocks. 

The  lily-faced  Solomon,  with  " bushy 
locks  dark  as  the  raven's  wing,"  chased 
bugs  for  a  thousand  hens  and  left  for  his 
throne  a  single  Cockerel,  mentally  slim, 
but  sexually  strong,  who,  by  aid  of 
eighteen  wives,  and  sixty  concubines  pro- 
duced twenty-eight  sons  and  sixty  daugh- 
ters. 

Michael  Angelo,  the  architect  of  St. 
Peter's,  sculptor,  painter  and  poet,  put 
tongues  in  clay  and  the  touch  of  divinity 
on  canvas,  and  yet  this  great  sweeping 
mind  never  sought  marriage  but  rather 
the  pure  and  ardent  companionship  of 
widow  Colonna. 

Ariosto,  noted  for  his  vivid  imagination, 
vivacity,  fertility  of  resource,  word-paint- 
ing and  beauty  of  style,  was  called  the  di- 
vine by  Galileo.  By  a  Florentine  widow 
he  had  two  sons. 

"Tumble-down  Dick,"  was  Cromwell's 
son,  a  poor,  feeble  creature,  shooed  from 
the  throne  in  about  three  weeks. 

A.  Von  Humboldt,  the  great  scientific 


84       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

traveler  and  son  of  nobility,  never  mar- 
ried. Of  him  Goethe  said:  "I  may  say 
he  has  not  his  equal  in  knowledge,  in  liv- 
ing wisdom. " 

Napoleon  III  gave  royalty  a  single  son. 

The  bigot  Edward  Gibbon  was  the  son 
of  a  member  of  Parliament,  and  in  a  fam- 
ily of  seven  he  was  the  only  one  who  sur- 
vived childhood.  He  was  low  in  stature, 
feeble  in  health,  with  large  head,  thin  legs, 
big  feet,  shrill  voice,  shy  and  timid;  and 
yet  bridged  twelve  centuries  with  a  his- 
tory which  is  still  the  highest  authority  on 
most  of  the  periods  of  which  it  treats. 

Ferdinand,  of  Columbus  fame,  begat 
crazy  Johanna,  the  mother  of  Charles  V 
of  Germany,  whose  two  sons  were  con- 
stantly pursued  by  squirrels. 

Napoleon  I,  the  modern  Mars,  was  twice 
married,  resulting  in  a  single  scrubby 
son. 

Dean  Swift  never  knew  the  passion  of 
love,  though  for  thirty-five  years  he  was 
the  virtuous  companion  of  the  beautiful 
and  intellectually  fascinating  Stella. 
Within  one  hour  after  his  death  his  ad- 


Intellectuals  Generally  Unfertile    85 

mirers  clipped  Ms  head  as  clean  as  the 
dome  of  the  Colossus  of  Rhodes. 

Lord  Bacon  in  quest  of  wealth  found  it 
in  a  childless  matrimony,  as  sketches  of 
him  make  no  references  to  children. 

One  child  bore  the  name  of  the  noted 
Edmund  Burke. 

Alexander  Pope,  healthy,  plump,  pret- 
ty, and  precocious,  at  the  age  of  twelve 
was  attacked  by  a  serious  illness  induced 
by  " perpetual  application,"  which  ruined 
his  health  and  distorted  his  body.  His 
" Essay  on  Man,"  alone  will  carry  his 
memory  undimmed  through  the  coming 
ages.  He  left  no  descendants,  and  Martha 
Blount  was  the  only  woman  who  in  the 
least  swayed  this  mental  marvel. 

Lord  Macaulay,  whose  intellect  from 
early  infancy  burned  with  unusual  bril- 
liancy, died  a  bachelor. 

Cecil  Rhodes  stamped  his  name  on  the 
continent  of  Africa  and  in  the  history  of 
the  British  Empire  and  almost  hated 
women. 

Oliver  Goldsmith,  who  "  wrote  like  an 


86       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

angel,  but  talked  like  poor  poll,"  had  no 
taste  for  matrimony. 

To  say  that  Bismarck  built  the  modern 
German  Empire  is  a  sufficient  tribute  to 
his  greatness,  still  this  towering  master 
of  statecraft  added  but  three  to  the 
Kaiser's  subjects. 

Louis  Agassiz,  a  Swiss  naturalist  and 
Harvard  professor,  had  but  one  son. 

From  the  intellectual  aristocracy  of 
New  England  came  Ralph  Waldo  Emer- 
son, a  mild  man  with  a  scholar's  face,  who, 
like  Hawthorne,  despised  explosive  laugh- 
ter. His  writings  will  long  supply  oil 
for  other  men's  lamps.  "Hitch  your 
wagon  to  a  star,"  is  one  of  his  many  im- 
perishable sayings.  His  matrimonial  rec- 
ord is  two  wives  and  two  sons. 

William  Cullen  Bryant  was  of  Puri- 
tan ancestry,  the  son  of  a  cultured  physi- 
cian and  a  weakling  at  birth,  with  a  head 
much  too  large  for  his  body,  rendered 
normal  by  brook  bathing  on  which  some- 
times the  ice  had  to  be  broken  for  the  daily 
Spartan  bath.  This  first  famous  American 
poet  knew  the  alphabet  at  the  age  of  six- 


Intellectuals  Generally  Unfertile     87 

teen  months  and  left  two  daughters  to  bask 
in  the  sunshine  of  his  fame. 

The  historian  Francis  Parkman  was  of 
distinguished  ancestry,  the  son  of  a  min- 
ister and  the  father  of  two  daughters. 

Two  wives  and  one  child  is  the  matri- 
monial record  of  James  Russell  Lowell, 
poet,  scholar,  humorist,  and  ambassador. 

John  G.  Whittier,  former  shoemaker, 
journalist,  agitator,  and  poet,  asked  no 
woman  to  wear  his  name. 

Washington  Irving,  lawyer,  traveler, 
minister  to  Spain,  and  one  of  America's 
most  gifted  writers,  lived  the  trying  life 
of  a  bachelor. 

Chauncey  Depew  of  distinguished  an- 
cestry, a  serious  or  playful  orator  at  will, 
a  United  States  senator  and  the  most 
noted  after-dinner  entertainer  of  his  time, 
though  twice  married,  and  called  nearly 
everything  else,  was  never  called  father. 

David  B.  Hill,  lawyer,  governor,  United 
States  senator  and  candidate  for  Presi- 
dent, studiously  avoided  the  matrimonial 
toga. 


88       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

The  great  white-souled  Washington  left 
his  image  on  no  human  clay. 

Samuel  J.  Tilden,  attorney  for  fifty- 
two  corporations,  was  so  highly  intellec- 
tual that  he  never  built  a  nest  in  the  lap 
of  matrimony. 

The  war  governor  of  the  Empire  State, 
Horatio  Seymour,  closed  his  career  with- 
out a  son  or  daughter. 

President  McKinley  was  the  seventh 
son  in  a  family  of  nine  and  his  two  daugh- 
ters died  in  infancy. 

Lolita  Armour,  the  incubator  baby  of 
twenty  years  ago,  is  the  only  heir  of  the 
J.  Ogden  Armour  millions. 

Poe  married  his  cousin  Virginia,  less 
than  fourteen  years  of  age,  who  died  child- 
less at  twenty-four.  She  was  the  only 
magnet  that  drew  and  held  the  love  of  this 
intellectual  wilderness  in  all  of  his  oscil- 
lations from  the  skies  to  the  gutter. 

Only  one  child  called  the  imperious, 
matchless  Conkling  father. 

The  dazzling  splendor  of  Franklin's  in- 
tellect gave  him  membership  in  all  of  the 
leading  scientific  societies  of  the  Old 


Intellectuals  Generally  Unfertile    89 

World  and  at  the  close  of  his  great  career 
there  was  but  one  child  to  soothe  his  throb- 
bing brow. 

When  Henry  Wilson  died  the  faithful 
tomb  unveiled  its  bosom  and  received  the 
Vice-President  of  the  United  States  of 
whom  it  was  said:  "He  served  his  imper- 
iled country  faithfully,  withstood  tempta- 
tions and  died  an  honest  man. ' '  This  con- 
structive statesman,  with  better  than  a 
three-pound  brain,  was  so  poor  that  Sum- 
ner  loaned  him  one  hundred  dollars  to 
defray  his  inaugural  expenses,  and  so  un- 
fruitful that  his  only  son  in  early  child- 
hood joined  the  Heavenly  choir. 

These  examples  tend  to  support  the  El- 
lis theory  that  barrenness  haunts  the  wake 
of  a  highly  developed  intellectuality. 

But  gifted  men  developed  up  from  the 
common  walks  of  life,  as  a  rule,  are  far 
more  prolific  than  those  long  associated 
with  the  so-called  learned  professions. 

A  few  noted  examples  will  suffice. 

Lincoln,  the  Negro's  Moses,  the  Union's 
savior  and  the  Republic's  saint,  had  four 
children. 


90       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

Beecher,  of  Plymouth  Church  fame,  a 
mud-ball  in  boyhood,  but  a  bright  star  in 
manhood,  had  four  children. 

Samuel  S.  Clemens  of  "Tom  Sawyer" 
fame,  and  the  most  recent  assassin  of  sad- 
ness, had  four  children. 

James  A.  Garfield  studiously  obeyed  his 
mother's  behest,  "Kemember  thy  God  and 
study  books,"  until  called  from  the  rein 
of  the  mule  to  the  reign  of  the  people.  Of 
his  six  children  one  has  written  his  name 
in  the  history  of  the  World  War. 

Thomas  A.  Edison,  who  rescued  the  hu- 
man voice  from  the  sleep  of  the  tomb,  and, 
wizard-like,  robbed  the  occult  of  her  treas- 
ures, found  time  to  dance  six  children 
upon  his  knee. 

James  Fenimore  Cooper,  whose  tales 
raised  the  hair  on  bald  heads,  had  seven 
children. 

Horace  Greeley,  the  father  of  seven  chil- 
dren, with  mud  on  his  boots,  his  worldly 
effects  in  his  bandanna,  entered  New  York 
City  with  a  country-fed  brain  which  car- 
ried him  over  one  of  the  roughest  roads 
that  man  ever  trod  from  the  typesetter's 


Intellectuals  Generally  Unfertile    91 

case  to  the  Democratic  nomination  for 
President  of  the  United  States. 

Peter  Jefferson  was  a  planter,  sur- 
veyor of  note  in  the  Colony  of  Virginia, 
and  a  member  of  the  House  of  Burgesses. 
Thomas  Jefferson  was  his  third  child  and 
eldest  son  in  a  family  of  ten  children. 

Lyman  Beecher  was  the  second  genera- 
tion of  one  of  the  most  noted  of  American 
families.  His  "Six  Sermons  on  Intem- 
perance" were  translated  into  many  lan- 
guages; and  his  sermon  on  the  death  of 
Hamilton  at  the  hands  of  Burr  marked  the 
beginning  of  the  end  of  dueling  in  the 
United  States.  Of  his  thirteen  children, 
seven  became  clergymen.  The  most  noted 
of  his  family  are  Catherine  E.  Beecher, 
Thomas  K.  Beecher,  Harriet  Beecher 
Stowe,  and  Henry  Ward  Beecher. 

Thomas  Marshall,  in  the  Revolutionary 
War,  rose  to  the  rank  of  colonel,  and  John 
Marshall,  that  peerless  jurist,  who  found 
the  Constitution  a  civic  dogma  and  left 
it  a  bar  of  steel,  was  the  eldest  of  fifteen 
children. 


92       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

Intellectuality  in  woman  is  also  a  bowl- 
der in  the  highway  of  the  cradle. 

Michal,  the  daughter  of  King  Saul  and 
wife  of  King  David,  never  felt  her  first- 
born's breath. 

The  six  wives  of  England's  genital  ath- 
lete matured  but  three  children,  all  of 
whom  would  have  filled  unknown  graves 
had  they  not  been  born  to  a  crown. 

The  beautiful,  talented  Katharine  Parr, 
who  composed  both  in  Greek  and  Latin, 
matrimonied  at  fifteen,  was  herself  four 
times  a  widow,  thrice  of  widowers,  and  the 
sixth  wife  of  England's  most  scaturient 
royal  sensualist;  she  died  childless. 

George  Eliot  so  magnetized  the  married 
and  gifted  Lewes  that  many  years  were 
spent  together  and  a  scandal  bred  which 
closed  the  coveted  doors  to  social  centers 
and  distilled  a  gall  in  her  soul  which  she 
unstintingly  poured  into  her  literary 
stream. 

Maria  Susanna  Cummins,  the  daughter 
of  an  able  judge  and  the  author  of  Lamp- 
lighter, still  widely  read,  had  no  taste  for 
matrimony. 


Intellectuals  Generally  Unfertile    93 

Alice  and  Phoebe  Gary,  deprived  of 
candles  by  their  stepmother,  courted  the 
Muse  by  the  light  of  rag  wicks  in  saucers 
of  lard.  Attractive  women,  clever  talk- 
ers, gifted  writers — the  cultured  and  ar- 
tistic sought  them  in  their  New  York 
City  home,  not  for  matrimony,  but  to  loll 
in  the  sunlight  of  genius. 

Dr.  Mary  Walker,  in  man's  attire  by 
leave  of  Congress,  led  her  sex  for  half  a 
century  in  a  contest  for  social  equality, 
and  while  she  drew  the  eyes  of  the  world 
upon  her,  still  no  man  was  ever  able  to 
ring  her  finger. 

Sister  Maria  Celeste,  who  chose  a  celi- 
bate life,  was  the  daughter  of  the  astrono- 
mer and  physicist  Galileo,  the  sweep  of 
whose  marvelous  mind  was  beyond  the 
grasp  of  the  midget  souls  around  him. 

The  cultured  Empress  Josephine  had 
one  child  by  her  first  husband,  but  was 
divorced  by  Napoleon  for  barrenness. 

The  authoress  Margaret  Fuller  Ossoli, 
the  daughter  of  a  lawyer,  had  but  one 
child. 

Helen  Hunt  Jackson,  the  daughter  of 


94       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

a  college  professor,  was  twice  married, 
had  two  sons  both  of  whom  died  in  child- 
hood. 

Clara  Barton,  whose  deeds  of  mercy 
covered  two  continents  and  won  for  her 
the  Iron  Cross  of  Germany,  still  failed  to 
attain  the  greatest  title  known  to  woman, 
that  of  "Mother." 

Lucy  Stone  worked  her  way  through 
Oberlin  College,  and  during  her  four- 
years  course  had  but  one  new  dress  and 
that  was  calico.  She  became  a  noted  abo- 
litionist, and  when  she  was  to  speak  in 
Maiden,  the  congregational  minister  gave 
notice  that  "a  hen  will  undertake  to  crow 
like  a  cock  at  the  town  hall  this  afternoon. 
Anybody  who  wants  to  hear  that  kind  of 
music  will  of  course  attend."  At  thirty- 
seven  she  entered  Platonic  matrimony,  re- 
tained her  maiden  name  and  died  child- 
less. 

These  noted  women  are  a  type  of  myri- 
ads of  their  sex,  who  for  centuries  past 
have  chosen  the  convent,  teaching  litera- 
ture, philanthropy,  politics,  professional 


Intellectuals  Generally  Unfertile    95 

or  intellectual  activities,  rather  than  the 
calling  of  tilling  God's  flowers  in  the  gar- 
den of  the  heart. 

A  modern  silo  would  hold  the  increase 
of  America's  social  queens,  from  the  mod- 
est, gifted  Martha  Washington,  to  the 
present-day  bare-back  type. 

To  further  support  the  theory  of  Ellis 
and  others,  that  fertility  decreases  with 
organic  development,  thousands  of  the 
dead  might  be  called  from  their  tombs, 
and  of  the  living  from  their  palaces  and 
banquet  halls. 

The  same  rule  obtains  among  animals. 

Dan  Patch,  with  a  pacing  record  of 
liSS1^,  descended  in  the  male  line  from 
George  Wilkes  with  a  record  of  2:22. 
Patch  as  a  sire  has  to  his  credit  twenty- 
one  pacers ;  all  good  but  none  famous. 

Cresceus,  the  trotting  king,  with  a  rec- 
ord of  2 :02^4,  was  sold  for  a  fabulous  sum 
to  the  Russian  Government  for  breeding 
purposes  and  proved  such  a  failure  that 
he  was  put  to  work  on  a  commissary 
wagon. 


96       Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

Good  trotters  have  come  alike  from  the 
thoroughbred,  the  Morgan,  the  Canadian, 
and  the  Indian  pony.  Morgan,  a  Vermont 
horse,  did  not  come  from  fast  ancestry,  yet 
left  numerous  fast- trotting  descendants; 
and  Dutchman,  one  of  our  best  trotters* 
was  taken  out  of  a  clay  yard,  and  put  on 
the  turf  from  a  Pennsylvania  wagon  team. 

Mr.  Galton  says : 

I  regret  I  am  unable  to  solve  the  simple 
question  whether,  and  how  far,  men  and 
women  who  are  prodigies  of  genius  are 
infertile.  The  daughters  of  parents  who 
have  produced  single  children  are  them- 
selves apt  to  be  sterile. 

Recent  investigation  supports  Mr.  Gal- 
ton. 

In  the  London  Times  of  October  16, 
1916,  it  is  reported  that  a 

voluntary  confidential  census  among  a 
class  of  "intellectuals,"  showed  that  of 
120  marriages,  107  were  "limited,"  the 
average  number  of  children  to  each  mar- 
riage being  considerably  under  2.  If  this 
were  to  become  the  average  number  of 
children  to  every  married  couple  through- 


Intellectuals  Generally  Unfertile     97 

out  the  land,  France  would  live  to  write 
England's  obituary  notice,  with  the  epi- 
taph on  her  tombstone:  "Died  of  suicidal 
corruption  and  syphilitic  poisoning." 


CHAPTEE  X 
SOCIETY 

SOCIETY,  in  its  broad  and  temporal 
sense,  comprehends  the  poor,  well-to-do, 
and  wealthy. 

The  sexology  of  Mr.  Ellis  touching  off- 
spring seeks  to  introduce  into  society  the 
i 'ideal  of  quality  in  place  of  the  ideal  of 
quantity, "  and  to  crush  "the  vulgar  aim 
of  reckless  racial  fertility." 

By  the  phrase  " ideal  of  quality"  we 
assume  that  Mr.  Ellis  has  in  mind  an  edu- 
cated and  financially  comfortable  paren- 
tage. He  evidently  intends  that  all  in- 
crease shall  ultimately  come  from  the  up- 
per layer  of  society  as  that  layer  will  read- 
ily subordinate  itself  to  the  doctrine  that 
1  'reckless  racial  fertility"  ought  to  be 
checked.  We  all  know  that  the  men  and 
women  of  this  portion  of  the  human  fam- 
ily are  not  much  given  to  progeny-hunt- 

98 


Society  99 

ing.  They  may  have  become  disheartened 
by  the  comparison  of  their  best  efforts 
with  the  children  of  those  socially  be- 
neath them.  If  the  future  pillars  of  this 
republic  are  to  be  hooked  from  the  ocean 
of  wealth  it  behooves  us  to  examine  its 
depths. 

There  is  but  little  revealed  that  greatly 
interests  us  outside  of  man  and  his  works, 
and  unlike  the  chipmunk,  it  is  hard  for  one 
to  burrow  into  the  human  family  without 
leaving  some  dirt  at  the  hole. 

Since  Noah  sang  "Rocked  in  the  Cradle 
of  the  Deep"  while  his  kidneys  worked  on 
the  blood  of  the  grape,  till  noisy  slumber 
alarmed  his  menagerie  and  his  wine- 
soaked  body  became  the  rendezvous  of 
gnats,  flies,  hornets,  wasps,  punkies,  mos- 
quitoes, libellulas,  scarabs,  spring-tails, 
rhipipters,  soldados,  necrophagans  and 
humpbacked  worms,  man  has  changed  but 
little  in  his  tastes,  habits,  and  passions, 
save  possibly,  in  the  intensity  of  his  hy- 
pocrisies and  in  the  refinement  of  his  vil- 
lainies. 

Trimalchio  fed  his  guests  on  peafowl's 


100     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

eggs  taken  from  the  straw  under  a  wooden 
hen,  and  startled  the  gluttons  with  a  cir- 
cular tray  containing  food  representa- 
tions of  the  signs  of  the  Zodiac,  and  fin- 
ally washed  sow's  haslets  to  the  second  sta- 
tion with  century  wine,  and  reclined  on 
the  down  of  partridge  wings;  since  then 
he  has  had  some  feeble  imitators. 

A  New  York  lust  scavenger,  the  vic- 
tim of  a  moral  low-brow,  touched  a  spring 
and  disclosed  a  human  pullet  who  stood  on 
the  banquet  table  robed  only  in  a  smile 
and  as  imperturbed  as  an  ass  of  Corin- 
thian metal. 

Herod,  when  soused,  gave  the  head  of 
John  the  Baptist  to  a  leg-twisting  favorite 
who  thrilled  the  old  fool  by  a  climactic 
leap  from  a  table  to  his  lap.  Many  of  us 
can  recall  modern  instances  of  cane-suck- 
ing sons  of  wealthy  men  who  have  been 
leaped  upon  by  terpsichorean  artists. 

If  the  reports  that  have  come  to  us  of 
the  social  broodings  at  exclusive  Atlantic 
seaboard  resorts  are  one-half  as  depend- 
able as  a  sparrow's  chastity  or  a  harlot's 
dream,  then,  assuredly,  no  bedtime  dan- 


Society  101 

cer  who  ever  whisked  flies  from  an  Apis 
bull  with  a  peacock  quill  had  a  physical 
movement  or  thrill  unknown  to  the  wine- 
driven  engines  of  love  that  wiggle  in  ham- 
mocks or  "ham"  the  sands  on  the  moaning 
shores  of  these  sin-soused  cities  of  the 
sea. 

At  these  resorts  fools  and  their  money 
developed  the  banquet  stunts. 

A  man  of  some  intelligence  and  great 
wealth,  who  descended  from  the  sweat- 
soiled  loins  of  an  immigrant,  procured 
the  loan  of  Consul  II,  the  leading  social 
Ape  of  Central  Park,  and  in  human 
breeches  and  snowy  shirt  front  he  was 
given  the  plate  at  the  right  of  his  host. 
In  intellect  and  sobriety  he  was  the  star 
of  the  evening. 

At  another  gathering  of  the  low-combed 
cocks  of  society  a  pig  was  loosed  among 
the  wine-swashed,  waist-stretched  revel- 
ers. Greased  and  bewildered,  he  dove 
among  the  screaming,  swaying,  tumbling 
female  tanks,  who  love  every  he-thing  but 
their  husbands,  and  ripped  trails  and 
tailoring  till  he  wrought  a  havoc  and  ana- 


102     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

tomical  exposure  sufficient  to  glut  the 
monetary  and  sensual  cravings  of  whin- 
nying studs,  who  spend  their  wakeful 
hours  plucking  blooms  from  the  garden 
of  virtue,  later  to  cast  them  aside,  scent- 
less and  dead. 

The  pagans,  in  the  days  of  their  juiciest 
sins,  could  have  learned  from  these  foul 
lemans  who  nocturnally  infest  the  reek- 
ing sewers  of  shady  resorts,  and,  like  the 
unclean  birds  of  the  night,  retire  only 
with  the  breaking  dawn. 

The  dollar  has  been  the  yardstick  of  so- 
ciety— since  Abraham  paid  Ephron  four 
hundred  shekels  of  silver  for  Sarah's 
tomb — whether  picked  from  the  ham  of  a 
Harpy  or  the  hand  of  an  Angel. 

Socially  the  clean  wife  of  a  poor  intel- 
lectual brilliant  would  not  in  these  days 
be  given  standing  room  with  those  en- 
riched by  pickles,  bonds,  hams,  or  sau- 
sages. 

Gold  is  the  counterpane  for  grammati- 
cal errors  and  genital  sins. 

Society,  as  now  constituted  the  world 
over,  is  a  pottage  composed  of  miscellane- 


Society  103 

OTIS  meats,  including  bob  veal,  sweet- 
bread, lamb  fry,  choice  cuts,  capon  and 
buttocks  with  a  vegetable  adjunct  of 
skunk  cabbage,  pig  weeds,  cowslips,  bur- 
docks, carrots,  lentils  and  an  occasional 
sweet  herb  and  all  spiced  with  gold  dust. 

A  calico  printer  founded  the  famed  Peel 
family. 

Baron  Reading,  who  has  just  been 
created  an  earl,  and  Lord  Northcliffe,  who 
has  been  made  a  viscount,  are  both  of  the 
humblest  origin.  Northcliffe  was  a  re- 
porter, and  Beading,  now  Lord  Chief 
Justice,  is  the  son  of  a  Jewish  storekeeper. 
Lloyd  George,  Prime  Minister  of  England 
sold  groceries  in  his  father's  store. 

The  son  of  a  section  boss,  born  in  a  little 
shanty  in  a  western  boom  town,  John  J. 
Pershing,  in  command  of  the  American 
Army  in  the  greatest  war  that  ever  shook 
the  earth,  drove  the  blood-reeking  Hun 
from  the  soil  of  his  Alsatian  ancestors. 

Clemenceau,  who  kissed  every  stone 
along  the  highway  of  poverty,  the  recent 
Premier  of  France,  is  accredited  one  of 


104     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

the  broadest  and  shrewdest  of  living 
statesmen. 

The  Socialist  Ebert,  who  on  the  abdica- 
tion of  the  Kaiser  took  the  royal  post  of 
Chancellor  and  shocked  the  aristocracy  of 
the  Empire  by  reposing  in  the  Kaiser's 
bed  for  two  nights,  is  a  harnessmaker  by 
trade. 

In  the  business  world  the  men  that  have 
emerged  from  the  gloomy  shades  of  pov- 
erty into  the  sunlight  of  prosperity  consti- 
tute a  vast  army. 

Notable  amongst  them  is  Charles  M. 
Schwab,  who  entered  a  mill  at  the  age  of 
eighteen  and  finally  performed  the  mar- 
velous feat,  as  head  of  the  United  States 
Shipbuilding  Corporation,  of  producing 
one  hundred  and  twenty-four  ships  in  the 
month  of  July,  1918. 

Let  the  descendants  of  these  and  other 
noted  men  of  humble  origin  refrain  from 
silly  boasting  on  the  subject  of  ancestry, 
but  rather  pride  themselves  on  the 
humbleness  of  their  antecedents  and  the 
greatness  attained  by  them. 

We  are  all  well  aware  that  this  social 


Society  105 

ocean  out  of  which  Mr.  Ellis  hopes  to  fish 
" quality"    is    constantly    absorbing    the 
drainage  of  many  social  cesspools. 
Robert  Burton  says : 

Consider  the  beginning,  present  estate, 
progress,  ending  of  gentry,  and  then  tell 
me  what  it  is.  Oppression,  fraud,  cozen- 
ing, usury,  knavery,  bawdry,  murder,  and 
tyranny  are  the  beginning  of  many  an- 
cient families :  one  had  been  a  bloodsucker, 
a  parricide,  the  death  of  many  a  silly  soul 
in  some  unjust  quarrels,  seditions  made 
many  an  orphan  and  poor  widow,  and  for 
that  he  is  made  a  lord  or  an  earl,  and  his 
posterity  gentlemen  forever  after. 

The  same  noted  scholar  further  ob- 
serves : 

Hercules,  Romulus,  Alexander  (by 
Olympia's  confession),  Themistocles,  Ju- 
gurtha,  King  Arthur,  William  the  Con- 
queror, Homer,  Demosthenes,  P.  Lum- 
bard,  P.  Comestor,  Bartholus  were  bas- 
tards ;  and  that  almost  in  every  kingdom, 
the  most  ancient  families  have  been  at 
first  princes'  bastards;  their  worthiest 
captains,  best  wits,  greatest  scholars, 
bravest  spirits  in  all  our  annals,  have  been 
base. 


106     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

The  Normans  who  went  over  to  England 
with  William  the  Conqueror  and  consti- 
tuted the  proud  English  nobility  were 
simply  a  miscellaneous  set  of  adventurers, 
professional  fighting  men  of  unknown, 
and  no  doubt  for  the  most  part  undistin- 
guished, lineage.  William  the  Conqueror 
himself  was  a  bastard,  according  to  Bur- 
ton. 

To  get  a  little  nearer  home  let  me  call 
attention  to  the  root  of  some  of  the  so- 
called  first  families  of  the  present  day. 

The  Yanderbilt  root  paced  the  deck  of 
a  ferry ;  the  Astor  root  bought  pelts  from 
the  Indians;  the  Gould  root  was  a  sur- 
veyor and  mouse-trap  inventor;  the 
Mackey  root  was  a  bartender  and  gold 
prospector;  the  Lincoln  root,  a  rail  split- 
ter ;  the  Garfield  root,  a  canal  driver,  and 
the  Grant  root,  a  tanner. 

There  are  hundreds  of  others,  nameless 
because  still  in  the  flesh,  who  have  finan- 
cially emerged  from  the  most  abject,  but 
generally  respectable,  poverty,  and  their 
descendants  who  bask  in  the  sunshine  of 
inherited  wealth  should  not  forget  whence 


Society  107 

they  sprung,  and  that  their  pile  may  rest 
on  bleeding  hearts,  wrecked  homes,  sui- 
cides, and  financial  cripples,  the  victims 
of  grasping,  thieving  ancestors. 

Still  as  the  world  views  them  they  con- 
stitute the  gentry,  and  Agrippa  defined 
gentry  as  "a  sanctuary  of  knavery  and 
naughtiness,  a  cloak  for  wickedness  and 
excusable  vices,  of  pride,  fraud,  contempt, 
boasting,  oppression,  dissimulation,  lust, 
gluttony,  malice,  fornication,  adultery,  ig- 
norance, and  impiety." 

How  many  of  the  white-trousered  gen- 
try and  degenerate  princelings  who  scorn 
labor,  yet  wear  and  eat  its  sweat,  have  de- 
scended from  the  church-robbers  of  the 
sixteenth  century? 

The  right  to  rule  is  man's  gift,  and  it  is 
not  vested  in  some  driveling  son  of  a 
rough-neck  ancestor,  or  bandit  forefather 
whose  mailed  fist  battered  his  way  to 
power  and  a  throne. 

How  many  family  trees  have  been  felled 
in  the  social  forest  upon  the  discovery  of 
a  criminal  ancestor  dangling  from  a 
limb! 


108     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

Show  me  a  money-bag  who  dares  invite 
all  of  his  relatives  to  any  of  his  social 
functions. 

Some  disown  their  parents,  deny  broth- 
ers and  sisters,  and  will  not  suffer  kindred 
and  friends  to  approach  lest  they  umbrate 
their  pomp,  accounting  it  a  mud  stain  on 
their  greatness  to  have  had  such  beggarly 
beginnings. 

Simon  in  Lucian,  in  the  day  of  his 
wealth,  changed  his  name  to  Simonides 
because  of  his  beggarly  kindred,  and  set 
the  house  of  his  birth  on  fire  that  no  man 
should  point  it  out. 

Sickness  is  a  great  commoner,  and  until 
it  enters  the  banquet  hall  of  wealth,  the 
money  idolater  and  the  snobs  from  the 
womb  of  wealth  are  unmindful  that  the 
wood  is  drying  in  the  sun  that  will  make 
their  coffins,  and  that  the  despised  hand 
of  toil  will  dig  their  graves. 

The  result  is  the  same  whether  one  is 
strangled  by  a  chain  of  gold  or  a  rope 
of  hemp,  or  the  belly  is  filled  with  eclairs 
or  mush  and  milk. 

" Vanity  of  vanities;  all  is  vanity,"  is 


Society  109 

the  final  cry  of  these  worldly,  sin-laden, 
goldenrods  from  the  cheerless  vale  of  a 
drooping  virility. 

There  are  too  many  arrogant,  chest-in- 
flated, morally  poisoned  skunks,  who 
haughtily  point  to  a  tinseled  ancestry  and 
the  blue  veins  on  their  bodies  as  evidence 
of  greatness  and  of  their  right  to  make 
doormats  of  the  rest  of  mankind. 

With  us  wealth  is  society.  Money  or- 
nates  the  home,  adorns  the  body,  expands 
the  stomach,  breeds  gout,  pauperizes  hap- 
piness, leads  to  lust  stews,  brothels,  groin 
pains,  and  contempt  for  the  poor. 

The  nasty  refinements  of  society's  af- 
ternoon tango  tea  dancers,  when  embold- 
ened by  wine  and  amatory  yearnings,  led 
a  noted  New  York  restaurateur  recently 
to  close  out  his  supply  of  social  male 
household  pests,  tango  pirates  and  lounge 
lizards. 

The  best  solace  for  the  sensual  itch  is 
the  dishpan  or  washtub. 

Nero  never  wore  the  same  garments 
twice, — his  slaves  never  changed  theirs, 


110     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

— to-day  by  the  economy  of  nature  they 
are  physical  equals. 

In  social  distinction  founded  on  money 
alone  there  is  a  vast  volume  of  froth. 

A  crooked  overseer,  dishonest  banker, 
designing  petticoat,  Monte  Carlo,  storm  at 
sea,  flash  of  lightning,  financial  panic, 
drouth,  cyclone,  sickness,  invasion,  specu- 
lation, locusts,  bugs,  or  booze,  may  at  any 
time  force  a  Dives  to  the  level  of  a 
Lazarus. 

When  a  social  pillar  has  whiskied  his 
thirst  to  the  point  of  an  old-rose  nose,  and 
stretched  his  anatomy  at  the  feet  of  Bac- 
chus, and  finally  expelled  his  soul  in  a  wild 
delirium,  the  fee-hungry  doctor  saves  the 
family  name  by  announcing  that  dipso- 
mania was  the  cause  of  death.  In  a  me- 
chanic it  would  have  been  tremens. 

If  one  of  the  common  herd  shoves  an  ar- 
ticle from  a  counter  into  her  muff  she  is 
a  thief  or  shoplifter,  but  when  a  fur-laden, 
powdered  sister  of  the  social  set  is  caught 
the  poor  soul  is  suffering  from  klepto- 
mania. 

As  a  rule,  the  working  girl  will  carry 


Society  111 

to  maturity  her  social  indiscretion  and 
clothe  it  with  a  mother's  love;  but  out  of 
the  rustling  silk  no  human  cry  is  ever 
heard,  for  the  blight  of  gold  has  parched 
the  plant  and  cast  it  to  the  lap  of  mother 
earth. 

One  pines  in  repentance  and  piety  or 
fills  a  harlot's  grave;  the  other  shines  in 
her  sins  and  society  and  holds  her  secrets 
till  judgment  day. 

A  noted  example  was  a  wealth-crazed 
spinster  of  Detroit,  Michigan,  who  loudly 
rang  the  social  bell  on  two  continents. 
Her  beauty  was  fodder  for  both  clowns 
and  kings.  At  seventeen  she  married  a 
Belgian  prince,  deserted  him  and  eloped 
with  a  cafe  fiddler.  Soon  wearying  of  his 
catgut  notes,  she  erased  him  from  her 
calling  list,  then  for  a  time  dropped  into 
obscurity  with  another  bee  that  had  been 
attracted  to  this  much-sucked  rose.  A 
self-willed,  highly  educated,  physically 
perfect  dynamo  of  mischievous  impulses, 
and  with  eyes  that  would  lift  a  saint  from 
his  knees,  she  tantalized  and  tortured  men 
in  all  of  the  capital  cities  of  Europe,  till, 


112     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

worn  down  by  the  fury  of  her  passions  and 
dissipations,  decorated  with  three  di- 
vorces and  cursed  by  four  husbands,  she 
recently  closed  her  eyes  in  poverty  and 
obscurity  at  Padua. 

The  golden-mouthed  John  Chrysostom 
expressed  the  general  sentiment  when  he 
pronounced  woman  to  be  "a  necessary 
evil,  a  natural  temptation,  a  desirable 
calamity,  a  domestic  peril,  a  deadly  fas- 
cination, and  a  painted  ill." 

How  many  matrons  of  our  day  can  be 
seen  in  Juvenal's  mirror  of  the  Roman 
matron  of  his  day?: 

All  glowing,  all  athirst 

For  wine,  whole  flasks  of  wine,  and  swallows  first 

Two  quarts  to  clear  her  stomach  and  excite 

A  ravenous,  an  unbounded  appetite. 

Maids  of  obscurity  are  freely  selling 
their  accumulated  beauty  and  form  to 
bloated  guzzlers  for  chariots  and  gems. 

If  the  beds  in  the  palatial  homes  of 
bachelor  libertines  through  this  land  could 
give  the  names  of  the  crushed  and  bleed- 
ing hearts  of  former  innocence  which  bur- 
dened them  till  required  for  another  vie- 


Society  113 

tiin,  a  field  of  wilted  flowers,  cut  in  the  bud 
by  the  reaper  of  lust,  would  stretch  from 
the  morning  gold  of  the  East  to  the  crim- 
son tinted  West. 

The  mashing  elders  sought  Susanna  in 
the  garden,  and  nightly  on  our  streets  can 
be  seen  hoary  lust-hunters  trailing  some 
unsuspecting  squab. 

How  many  can  give  thanks,  with  the 
soldier  and  pagan  saint  Marcus  Aurelius 
for  not  having  unlawfully  tested  his  viril- 
ity before  his  majority? 

Will  the  attractive  innocent  girl  ever 
learn  that  the  honeyed  words  and  special 
favors  of  her  married  employer  are  only 
spades  of  earth  from  virtue 's  grave  ?  Will 
she  ever  learn  that  the  promise  of  mar- 
riage by  a  son  of  wealth,  with  the  price 
paid  in  advance,  is  an  apple  of  Sodom 
which  will  turn  to  ashes  on  the  lips  ? 

Society  is  honeycombed  with  male  lust 
gluttons,  robed  in  attire  and  manners  of 
gentility,  but,  who,  at  heart,  are  lower 
than  the  rattler  that  warns  before  it 
strikes. 

A  noted  architect  and  his  millionaire 


114     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

slayer  are  fair  samples  of  an  army  of  so- 
cial hell-doomed,  carnal  sugs,  who  flay 
chastity  and  worship  sin. 

How  many  he-aristocrats  molt  away 
their  physical  substance  and  drearily  end 
their  days  groaning  and  sighing  over  their 
emasculated  powers,  and  exclaiming  in 
the  words  of  the  eunuch:  " Behold,  I  am 
a  dry  tree." 

Two  educated,  wealthy,  and  to  the  eye,, 
refined  sisters,  for  years  maintained  the 
palatial  " Whispering  in  the  Meadows" 
in  the  city  of  Chicago,  where  every  sensual 
diversion  known  to  Sodom  was  practiced 
by  themselves  and  stimulated  in  others. 
It  was  in  this  annex  to  hell  that  the  son  of 
a  noted  merchant  of  Chicago  was  killed 
while  furthering  his  creed  that  no  mar- 
ried woman  could  long  withstand  his  as- 
saults upon  her  virtue. 

Daily,  social,  financial  cripples  yoke 
themselves  to  any  old  rickety  female  So- 
domite who  can  stay  the  sag  in  their  fin- 
ancial backs. 

In  all  of  the  history  that  has  been  writ- 
ten on  the  walls  of  time  the  single  fact 


Society  115 

stands  out  that  whenever  gold  wrested 
the  throne  from  honor  and  virtue,  deca- 
dence followed. 

The  devil,  as  a  teacher,  is  tireless:  He 
never  sleeps.  He  works  but  little  in  the 
barren  soil  of  poverty.  In  the  fields  of 
the  idle  rich  or  in  the  laps  of  social  yearn- 
ers  he  reaps  abundant  harvests.  His  latest 
fad,  with  surface  innocence,  is  the  ex- 
change of  husbands  by  married  women  at 
the  shows,  dances,  theaters,  and  other 
gatherings. 

There  is  a  well-defined  percentage  of 
parasitic  sons  of  wealth  who  are  distin- 
guished by  red  eyes,  pearly  teeth,  daily 
bath  and  linen  shift,  perfect  mouth,  glove- 
and-cane  manners,  with  a  sensual  scent, 
erupted  hides  and  bandaged  anatomy,  and 
who  contaminate  and  poison  everything 
within  the  radius  of  their  unholy  mousing, 
and  yet  these  harpies  are  permitted  to 
roost  on  and  besmear  their  ancestral  perch 
and  enter  the  homes  of  refinement  and 
cleanliness  through  the  power  of  a  golden 
jimmy.  How  few  amongst  them  with  a 


116     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

nose  without  a  rose,  and  a  skin  without  a 
scab! 

They  roam  among  the  highest  social 
peaks  and  seek  victims  even  in  the  huts 
of  the  lowly.  From  the  records  of  court 
trials  and  the  pages  of  medical  works  it 
seems  that  their  own  sex  and  animals, 
even,  are  not  immune  from  their  mias- 
matic touch. 

Society,  in  its  restricted  sense,  is  made 
up  of  everything  that  its  membership  will 
tolerate. 

No  questions  were  asked  the  famous  il- 
legitimate Themistocles  after  he  had 
tricked  himself  into  the  baths  of  the  sons 
of  noted  Athenians. 

An  English  novelist  of  Chrysanthemum 
fame  on  a  balmy  morning  entered  the  har- 
bor of  New  York.  For  months  he  was 
wined  and  dined  and  sighed  over  and 
later  spent  three  years  in  a  London  prison 
for  an  unnatural  crime. 

The  devil  in  his  warfare  upon  unstained 
souls  has  had  in  his  service,  and  still  has, 
quite  as  many  women  as  men. 

The  female  seducer  to  lewdness,  for 


Society  117 

personal  gratification,  for  hire,  for  her 
haunts  or  for  others,  has  plied  her  nefari- 
ous calling  in  all  of  the  avenues  of  hu- 
manity since  the  passion-charged  wife  of 
Potiphar  ripped  his  cloak  from  the  virtu- 
ous Joseph  and  the  youthful  and  match- 
less Cleopatra  shed  her  rug  in  the  tent  of 
Caesar,  and  Delilah,  the  queen  of  teasers, 
robbed  Samson  of  his  secret. 

Like  decoys  in  the  stockyards,  procur- 
esses and  she-rakes  are  constantly  leading 
lambs  to  their  doom.  Thus  is  the  never- 
ending  stream  of  social  poison  fed;  and 
thus  were  the  instrumentalities  produced 
which  crippled  the  English  army  in  the 
Boer  War,  and  which  on  May  14, 1917,  led 
the  War  Fund  Committee  of  the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  to  print  the 
following  paragraph  in  its  appeal,  to  wit : 

Facts  not  allowed  to  be  published  but 
which  we  are  given  from  the  most  unques- 
tionable authorities  will  strike  you  with 
absolute  dismay.  Fine  young  men — many 
of  them  married — leaving  home  with  high 
characters  and  clean  records  returned  by 
the  tens  of  thousands  before  they  ever 


118     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

saw  the  front — ruined  for  life.  An  un- 
believable percentage  of  the  young  man- 
hood of  nations  sent  home  to  struggle 
hopelessly  against  their  fate — necessarily 
to  spread  their  curse  among  some  who  are 
innocent. 

The  Church  Times  of  February  18, 
1916,  an  English  publication,  discussed 
the  subject,  and  the  public  conscience  was 
painfully  shocked  to  learn  that 

one  in  ten  persons  in  large  towns  is  in- 
fected with  acquired  or  congenital  syph- 
ilis, and  a  far  larger  percentage  than  this, 
gonorrhea.  In  one  great  city  of  the  Em- 
pire, which  shall  be  nameless,  it  is  stated 
that  ninety  men  in  every  hundred  of  mid- 
dle age,  who  have  been  born  and  reared  in 
that  city,  have  had  venereal  disease. 

The  foregoing  is  supported  by  the  fact 
that  married  men  in  the  English  army 
home  on  furlough  were  not  permitted  to 
consort  with  their  wives.  It  has  been  re- 
ported that  within  a  year  two  hundred 
Canadian  nurses  returned  from  the  front 
burdened  with  the  evidence  of  sexual  pa- 
triotism. 


Society  119 

Mrs.  Neville-Rolfe,  in  an  article  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century,  in  October,  1918,  on 
the  subject  of  "The  Changing  Moral 
Standard,"  is  authority  for  the  following 
condensed  observations,  which  apply  to 
England. 

Those  who  pursue  a  course  of  conduct 
in  keeping  with  the  best  interests  of  the 
community  include  only  a  small  propor- 
tion of  the  men  and  probably  only  about 
two-thirds  to  half  of  the  women.  The 
rapid  numerical  increase  of  the  "  ama- 
teur" is  reducing  with  startling  rapidity 
the  proportion  of  women  living  up  to  our 
past  ideals  of  chastity. 

Available  records  show  that  from  1914 
to  1917  the  police  arrested  and  brought 
before  magistrates  for  soliciting  twenty 
thousand  women  in  the  city  of  London 
alone. 

There  is  no  denying  the  fact  that  girls, 
unmarried  women,  and  young  married 
women  of  all  classes  have  in  very  large 
numbers  joined  the  ranks  of  the  "ama- 
teur." 

Mrs.  Eolf e  wrote : 


120     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

It  is  a  severe  shock  to  be  forced  to  the 
recognition  of  such  depravity  as  is  indi- 
cated by  the  following  well-authenticated 
story.  A  girl  of  nineteen,  who  entered  a 
country-house  party,  when  asked  by  her 
hostess  where  she  was  staying  the  week 
before,  answered  glibly,  in  a  mixed  com- 
pany, "Oh,  I  was  at—  —and  had  a  top- 
ping time";  openly  boasting  of  promis- 
cuous immorality  during  the  visit.  That 
such  an  announcement  could  be  made  with- 
out the  majority  of  those  present  feeling 
that  anything  out  of  the  ordinary  had  oc- 
curred, shows  that  the  social  customs  and 
traditions  are  altering  rapidly  in  a  most 
undesirable  direction. 

Consider  also  the  well-educated  busi- 
ness girl  who  telephones  for  information 
as  to  where  facilities  for  treatment  of 
venereal  diseases  can  best  be  obtained  "be- 
cause I  was  kind  to  a  friend  who  came 
home  on  leave  the  other  day  and  now  my 
fiance  is  reaching  London  next  week  and 
we  are  to  be  married."  Or,  the  domestic 
servant  who  writes  for  information  of  the 
same  nature  in  great  distress,  because  she 
cannot  imagine  "who  I  got  it  from,  as 
all  my  boys  are  such  nice  boys  and  it  is 
not  as  if  I  was  a  bad  woman";  all  indi- 
cate the  changing  standards. 


Society  121 

It  is  mainly  the  result  of  a  short-sighted 
system  of  education,  the  excitement  in- 
herent in  war  conditions,  the  emancipation 
of  women,  immediately  followed  by  the 
economic  independence  of  very  large  num- 
bers under  conditions  removed  from  home 
influences. 

What  evidences  have  we  that  the  moral 
bulwark  reared  by  our  American  ances- 
tors is  being  battered  down? 

In  what  respect  have  we  changed  as  to 
our  mode  of  life,  habits,  practices,  and  be- 
liefs? 

Within  our  memory  angel  food  has  de- 
throned mush  and  milk,  and  silk  between 
the  ankle  and  the  knee  has  replaced  the 
woolen  sock.  The  patient  ox,  the  dash 
churn,  the  oaken  bucket,  the  revolving 
rake,  the  peg-tooth  drag,  the  grain  cradle, 
the  horse  tread  thrasher,  the  corn-plant- 
er's bag,  the  crosscut  saw  and  the  arm- 
strong  dung-spreader  have  passed  into 
history;  but  let  us  take  hope  from  the 
fact  that  the  cows  still  calve  and  the  hens 
lay  in  the  same  old  way. 

On  the  farm  the  wife  is  supplanted  by 


122     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

the  statutory  cow.  This  animal  must  be 
addressed  kindly,  and  have  her  hair 
combed  and  bag  handled  with  clean  hands 
and  in  full  dress.  Numerically  the  calves 
are  increasing  and  the  children  decreasing. 

The  spare  bed  is  occasionally  used  by 
a  son  or  daughter  who  has  left  the  Great 
White  Way  of  city  life  for  a  few  hours 
with  aging  parents.  The  tenement  house 
has  fallen  to  decay.  Nearly  every  man 
is  his  own  clergyman  and  without  the  con- 
stant gospel-pounding  of  a  Paul,  religious 
and  moral  lassitude  has  entered  many 
hearts  once  the  abiding  places  of  a  rigid 
Christianity. 

The  great  fortunes  made  by  hook  or 
crook  in  the  last  few  years  by  men  from 
the  common  walks  of  life  have  precipi- 
tated a  mad  struggle  for  riches  and  its 
pleasure,  resulting  in  a  bold  and  far-reach- 
ing demoralization  of  both  men  and  wo- 
men. The  farm  is  too  lonely  and  slow  for 
young  men,  and  the  milk  pan  is  no  longer 
the  mirror,  nor  the  country  youth  the 
companion,  of  the  girl  schooled  upon  the 
crystallized  sweat  of  doting  parents. 


Society  123 

The  Ten  Commandments  are  sent  to 
the  attic  and  the  golden  calf  wheeled  out. 
The  red-light  district  of  life  at  first  is 
cautiously  entered,  then  roamed  in,  till 
finally  its  pleasure-maddening  vortex 
sucks  in  and  enslaves  the  once  most  cau- 
tious nibblers  at  the  bait. 

Do  you  demand  proof  ? 

Since  Milton *s  Paradise  Lost  sold  for 
twenty-five  dollars  and  a  western  bull  for 
one  hundred  thousand  dollars,  the  public 
press  has  fairly  reeked  with  accounts  of 
domestic  woes,  social  evils,  crimes,  mur- 
ders, and  suicides. 

Men  and  women  in  all  stations  of  life 
are  daily  indicted  and  daily  convicted  of 
all  manner  of  crimes. 

We  see  the  wealthy  broker  Eddy  swap- 
ping wives  with  a  liveryman  followed  by 
murder  and  suicide;  the  Reno  divorce- 
court  judge  resigning  from  pure  exhaus- 
tion; married  women  preferring  dogs  to 
children  as  legatees;  the  bridge- whist 
table  to  the  domestic  hearth ;  the  cigarette 
to  the  darning  needle;  the  sinner  to  the 
saint;  the  purr  of  a  cat  to  a  child's 


124     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

prattle ;  feticide  to  maternity ;  a  slumber- 
ing ovary  to  a  wakeful  womb;  a  calci- 
mined  face  to  a  clean  skin;  unbosomed 
charms  to  a  veiled  existence ;  a  dog's  trous- 
seau to  children's  gowns;  Three  Weeks  in 
literature  to  The  Courtship  of  Miles  Stan- 
dish;  the  touch  of  a  pander er  to  a  hus- 
band's kiss;  the  sensual  arms  of  a  thick- 
lipped  ebony  pugilist  to  a  sunlit  face  of 
her  own  race;  the  stage  clout  to  a  ma- 
tronly dress ;  and  finally  the  street  is  pre- 
ferred to  the  home,  where  we  see  them 
"lewd,  petulant,  and  reeling  ripe  with 
wine" — a  condition  in  which  the  armor  of 
virtue  is  readily  vulnerable  to  the  tor- 
pedo of  lust. 

We  lately  read  of  bankers,  moral  teach- 
ers, professional  and  business  men,  mem- 
bers of  a  Christian  association,  in  a  sec- 
tion of  the  West,  having  outsinned  So- 
dom and  Gomorrah. 

Civilization  is  in  a  continual  flux,  and 
much  of  the  new-world  aristocracy  has 
reached  the  stage  of  ooze. 

Probably  the  seed  of  more  sowers  is 
now  cast  by  the  wayside,  more  tenanted 


Society  125 

wombs  evacuated  by  the  refinements  of 
surgery,  and  more  souls  hurled  over  the 
embankment  of  immorality  into  the  fervid 
bowels  of  hell,  than  at  any  time  since  the 
fig  leaf  was  ripped  from  its  moorings  by 
the  curiosity  of  woman. 

How  many  husbands  and  wives  whose 
lives  blended  well  in  the  dark  hours  of 
poverty  have  become  estranged  in  the  red 
glare  of  wealth? 

The  toxin  of  the  dollar  has  led  many  a 
man  to  sunder  his  matrimonial  fetters,  to 
pension  and  turn  out  to  grass  the  compan- 
ion of  his  humbler  days,  for  a  woman  with 
all  the  sexual  ferocity  of  a  Borgia  or  a 
Massalina  pounding  in  her  veins. 

Many  wives  are  so  cruelly  neglected  by 
husbands,  whose  daily  employment  is  to 
sweat  over  pleasures  that  yield  only  to  a 
golden  key,  that  the  road  to  perdition  is 
paved  with  broken  hearts  and  sprinkled 
with  the  ashes  of  loves  consumed  in  the 
roaring  fire  of  infidelity. 

There  would,  however,  be  less  cockerel- 
strutting  and  tail-feather  display  if  the 
deserted  wives  were  permitted  to  shoot 


126     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

the  bustle  off  from  every  drab  who  seeks, 
like  the  cowbird,  to  deposit  her  eggs  in  the 
nests  of  others. 

If  clean  husbands  would  apply  the 
Cudahy  treatment  to  sexual  prowlers  who 
enter  the  matrimonial  close  there  would 
be  fewer  men  rocking  other  men's  chil- 
dren when  they  think  they  are  rocking 
their  own. 

Walter  D.  Bieberach,  M.D.,  connected 
with  the  Chicago  Vice  Commission,  esti- 
mated that  the  profits  from  vice  in  that 
city  were  fifteen  million  dollars  per  an- 
num, divided  among  four  groups  com- 
posed of  the  brothel-keeper,  the  property- 
owner,  the  liquor-purveyor  and  the  amuse- 
ment-purveyor. 

It  would  seem  that  among  the  contend- 
ing nations  social  barriers  have  been  badly 
crippled  by  war. 

Birth-control  and  eugeny  have  been 
mired  by  the  sexual  whirlwind  which  is 
lashing  the  world. 

Stokes  shot  Jim  Fisk  in  a  fit  of  jeal- 
ousy over  that  voluptuous  sunburst  Jose- 
phine Mansfield.  This  is  only  a  well- 


Society  127 

known  instance  of  the  thousands  of  trig- 
ger-pullings  involving  the  possession  of 
Borne  queen  of  filth. 

The  world  well  knows  that  from  the 
cheerless  huts  of  the  lowly,  from  the 
bleak  wilderness  of  poverty,  from  the  bar- 
ren shores  of  illiteracy,  from  the  deserts 
of  opportunity — but  generally  from  the 
lap  of  clean  maternity,  sired  by  piety  and 
purity — have  come  the  stellar  intellects 
which  gradually  ascended  the  horizon  into 
the  clear  blue  field  of  knowledge  whence 
their  scintillations  illumined  the  somber 
highway  of  man's  activities,  harnessed 
the  untamed  powers  of  nature  and  fer- 
reted from  their  burrows  secrets  that 
baffled  man  since  the  dawn. 

President  Harding,  with  the  patriotic 
zeal  of  a  Washington,  the  sensitive  con- 
science of  a  Lincoln,  the  silent  courage 
and  tenacity  of  a  Grant,  the  temperament 
of  a  McKinley,  the  piety  and  purity  of 
a  Paul,  on  December  15, 1920,  at  Marion, 
in  an  address  to  the  Ohio  Child  Con- 
servation League,  clearly  indicated  that 


128     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

the  America  of  the  future  must  come  from 
the  soil  of  the  republic.    He  said: 

The  generation  of  to-day  in  its  concern 
for  the  morrow  will  guarantee  a  citizen- 
ship from  the  soil  of  America  which  will 
be  the  guaranty  of  American  security. 

To  the  social  students,  moral  philoso- 
phers, and  pupilmongers  who  are  honestly 
seeking  the  betterment  of  man,  I  would 
suggest  that  they  give  the  people  more  of 
Christ  and  less  of  Ellis. 

A  greater  number  of  the  stalking  evils 
of  the  day  can  be  withered  through  men- 
tal sanitation  and  moral  surgery,  than  by 
the  specialized  well-known  anticonception 
deceits  and  sexual  formulas. 

The  human  mind  always  feels  for  the 
popular  breeze  disregarding  the  source 
and  unmindful  of  its  effect. 

In  the  year  of  grace  1918  it  was  quite  in 
harmony  with  American  sentiment  to  con- 
sign the  Kaiser  to  hell  as  the  typification 
of  the  accumulated  barbarity  of  centuries. 
Yet  burning  accused  negroes  at  the  stake 


Society  129 

in  the  South  has  been  a  frequent  social 
pastime. 

In  May,  1917, — while  we  were  commend- 
ably  pouring  our  wealth  into  the  lap  of 
bleeding  Belgium  to  aid  the  suffering  vic- 
tims of  alleged  Hun  atrocities  and  belch- 
ing forth  anathemas  from  the  pulpits,  and 
issuing  well-intended  proclamations  from 
the  White  House,  threatening  the  world 
with  our  brand  of  democracy — two  thou- 
sand five  hundred  citizens  of  Memphis, 
Tennessee,  calmly  watched  the  sizzling 
flesh  fall  from  the  oil-soaked  burning 
body  of  Ell  Persons,  a  dangling  negro. 

While  the  whites  of  the  South  continue 
to  deny  the  blacks  the  due  process  of  law 
which  they  invoke  for  themselves,  they 
should  not  grow  red  in  the  face  blatantly 
demanding  justice  and  freedom  for  people 
abroad. 

"Thou  hypocrite,  first  cast  out  the 
beam  out  of  thine  own  eye ;  and  then  shalt 
thou  see  clearly  to  cast  out  the  mote  out 
of  thy  brother's  eye." 

Class  and  race  hatred,  religious  bigotry, 
avarice  and  immorality  will  always  be  f  es- 


130     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

tering  sores  in  the  side  of  world-democ- 
racy and  obstructing  bowlders  in  the  high- 
way of  eugeny. 

For  redemption  from  the  gathering  so- 
cial evils  which  are  blighting  many  of 
the  best  amongst  us  we  must  steadfastly 
lean  upon  the  arm  of  Christ  and  place  our 
trust  in  the  moral  stamina  of  the  com- 
mon people,  the  daily  associates  of  the 
Messiah,  who  have  always  in  times  of 
great  social  stress  and  oppression  rescued 
humanity  and  relit  the  taper  of  hope  in 
the  human  breast. 

If  we  escape  the  extreme  penalty  here 
our  civic  salvation  must  be  secured 
through  the  millions  of  Christian  men  and 
women  of  our  nation  who  shall  be  strong 
and  brave  enough  to  teach  mankind  by 
word  and  example  that  there  can  be  no 
hope  for  those  in  whose  hearts  the  grace 
of  God  is  a  stranger. 

One  of  the  most  elucidating  mental 
flashes,  on  present  social  conditions,  is  the 
following  from  the  pen  of  Hon.  Byron 
B.  Newton: 


Society  131 

Vulgar  of  manners,  overfed, 
Overdressed  and  underbred, 
Heartless,  Godless,  Hell's  delight, 
Eude  by  day  and  lewd  by  night, 
Bedwarfed  the  man,  overgrown  the  brute, 
Ruled  by  boss  and  prostitute, 
Purple-robed  and  pauper-clad, 
Raving,  rotten,  money-mad; 
A  squirming  herd  in  Mammon 's  mesh, 
A  wilderness  of  human  flesh, 
Crazed  with  avarice,  lust  and  rum — 
New  York,  Thy  name 's  delirium. 


CHAPTER  XI 

SHRINKING  PROGENY 

THE  plan  of  sexologists  does  not  com- 
prehend morality  as  it  has  come  to  us  from 
the  Cross  but  rather  a  limited  high-power 
progeny. 

Havelock  Ellis,  in  his  book  The  Task  of 
Social  Hygiene,  at  page  23  says : 

" Increase  and  multiply"  was  the  legen- 
dary injunction  uttered  on  the  threshold 
of  an  empty  world.  It  is  singularly  out  of 
place  in  an  age  in  which  the  earth  and  sea, 
if  not  indeed  the  very  air,  swarms  with 
countless  myriads  of  undistinguished  and 
undistinguishable  human  creatures,  until 
the  beauty  of  the  world  is  befouled  and 
the  glory  of  the  heavens  bedimmed.  To 
stem  back  that  tide  is  the  task  now  im- 
posed on  our  heroism,  to  elevate  and 
purify  and  refine  the  race,  to  introduce 
the  ideal  of  quality  in  place  of  the  ideal 
of  quantity  which  has  run  riot  so  long, 

132 


Shrinking  Progeny  133 

with  the  results  we  see.  The  vulgar  aim 
of  reckless  racial  fertility  is  no  longer 
within  our  reach  and  no  longer  commends 
itself  as  worthy.  It  is  not  consonant  with 
the  stage  of  civilization  we  are  at  the  mo- 
ment passing  through. 

The  foregoing  is  one  of  the  most  un- 
godly, unchristian  and  unpatriotic  pro- 
nouncements ever  written  on  ancient  tab- 
lets or  in  modern  books. 

Had  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  and  Mothers 
disregarded  the  multiplication  precept 
hurled  from  the  eternal  throne,  at  the 
dawn  of  man,  into  an  unpeopled  world, 
who  would  have  thrown  the  tea  of  the  op- 
pressor into  the  ocean  of  liberty,  who 
would  have  fought  the  Colonial  battles, 
whence  would  have  come  the  three  mil- 
lions of  unconquerable  men  and  women, 
who  would  have  rocked  the  cradle  of  lib- 
erty in  which  reposed  an  infant  republic, 
and  who  would  have  guarded  and  nur- 
tured that  infant  to  a  stately  manhood, 
represented  in  "Uncle  Sam,"  who  now 
proclaims  to  the  world  that  he  rules  the 
greatest  nation,  the  most  versatile  people 


134     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

and  the  best  governed  republic  that  the 
sun  has  ever  smiled  on  since  thrown  into 
space  from  the  majestic  hand  of  God? 

The  greatest  struggle  that  ever  rocked 
the  earth,  since  Cain  killed  Abel,  and 
which  fertilized  the  battlefields  of  Europe 
with  human  blood,  was  fought  by  children 
grown  to  manhood. 

When  Babylon,  Sparta,  Greece,  Rome, 
and  many  other  nations  which  have  long 
since  perished  from  the  earth,  had  at- 
tained the  zenith  of  their  greatness  and 
culture,  they  sought  the  widest  possible 
sexual  liberality,  but  set  bounds  to  their 
offspring,  and  willfully  permitted  their 
children  to  die  or  be  eaten  by  beasts,  thus 
unwittingly  sapping  their  man  and  wo- 
manhood, and  numerically  weakening 
their  nationality  by  ill  attention  to  pro- 
geny, thereby  hastening  the  approaching 
day  when  they  were  to  lay  the  crown  of 
centuries  of  glory  in  the  lap  of  the  in- 
vader. 

When  irreligious  France  wrote  above 
her  graveyards:  " Death  is  an  eternal 
sleep,"  and  in  1870,  fell  crushed  and  bleed- 


Shrinking  Progeny  135 

ing  before  the  invader,  a  victim  of  sen- 
sual and  riotous  living,  and  with  her  death 
rate  above  her  births,  in  alarm  she  then 
took  a  paternal  interest  in  her  pregnant 
daughters  and  public  morals,  and  pro- 
vided maternity  homes  for  dependent  or 
afflicted  women  who  were  molding  assets 
for  the  nation;  hence  in  less  than  fifty 
years,  we  behold  a  new  France,  so  regen- 
erated that  her  people,  in  genius,  patriot- 
ism, courage,  resources,  statesmanship, 
versatility,  and  endurance  are  now  the 
marvel  of  the  world. 

A  female  German  socialist  boldly  an- 
nounces the  doctrine  that  every  woman, 
regardless  of  social  relations,  having  a 
yearning  for  maternity  should  select  a, 
male  and  bring  forth  young. 

The  government  of  Germany  is  liberally 
socialistic  and  with  a  bounteous  hand 
takes  care  of  her  children  of  chance,  de- 
pendent mothers  and  the  unemployed. 
Her  net  increase  in  population  is  about 
one  million  a  year.  In  1906  the  number  of 
illicit  births  was  177,060 ;  and  now  twenty 
per  cent  of  all  increase  are  the  children 


136     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

of  love.  Here  we  have  a  people  who  from 
the  days  of  their  savagery  to  this  hour 
have  believed  in  monogamy  and  that  it 
was  their  duty  to  have  children  and  to 
rear  them  all.  Hence,  Germany  is  numeri- 
cally and  intellectually  one  of  the  great- 
est nations  on  earth,  and  single-handed, 
could  have,  in  1916,  wrested  the  crown 
from  any  king  or  ruler  then  burdening  his 
people  with  the  humbug  of  royalty. 

To  check  the  reckless  multiplication  of 
offspring  Richardson  and  others  appear 
to  advocate  the  special  cultivation  of  non- 
child-bearing  women.  In  other  words, 
these  godless  sexologists  want  a  scentless 
rose,  stoneless  cherry,  and  ovarian  desert. 

If  the  doctrine  of  Ellis  and  others,  that 
"  racial  fertility "  is  a  reckless  vulgar  aim, 
ever  effectively  roots  itself  in  the  hearts 
of  the  pale-face  nations,  the  time  will  as 
surely  come  in  the  future  as  in  the  past 
when  the  boasted  civilization  of  the  white 
man,  defended  by  machine-made  men 
grown  on  the  deserts  of  maternity,  will 
vanish  before  the  onrush  of  that  nation 


Shrinking  Progeny  137 

or  those  nations  who  have  kept  up  the 
4 'vulgar  aim"  of  "racial  fertility." 

Antagonism  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  toward  the  birth-control  move- 
ment is  well  known.  This  antagonism  is 
based  on  theological  grounds,  but  it  has 
frequently  been  pointed  out  that  the  re- 
sult, whether  the  Church  has  the  fact  in 
mind  or  not,  will  be  to  give  the  Church  a 
slowly  increasing  preponderance  in  num- 
bers in  any  community  where  the  popula- 
tion is  made  up  in  part  of  Catholics  and 
in  part  of  Protestants. 

The  Church  of  Jesus  Christ  of  Latter- 
Day  Saints,  popularly  known  as  the  Mor- 
mon Church,  has  taken  a  similarly  antag- 
onistic stand  on  birth-control.  Theologi- 
cal objections  are  raised  against  it ;  but  in 
this  case  what  may  be  called  the  eugenic 
aspect,  the  problem  of  altering  the  rela- 
tive proportions  of  different  classes  in  a 
population,  is  clearly  seen  and  acknowl- 
edged. 

In  the  July  issue  of  the  Relief  Society 
Magazine,  an  official  publication  issued  at 
Salt  Lake  City,  five  of  the  twelve  elders 


138     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

who  make  up  the  supreme  council  of -the 
organization  state  their  views  on  birth- 
control. 

The  eugenic  view  of  the  subject  is  most 
clearly  seen  by  Elder  Joseph  F.  Smith,  Jr., 
who  points  out:  "I  feel  only  the  greatest 
contempt  for  those  who,  because  of  a  little 
worldly  learning  or  a  feeling  of  their 
own  superiority  over  others,  advocate  and 
endeavor  to  control  the  so-called  'lower 
classes'  from  what  they  are  pleased  to 
call  'indiscriminate  breeding.' 

The  old  Colonial  stock  that  one  or  two 
centuries  ago  laid  the  foundation  of  our 
great  nation  is  rapidly  being  replaced  by 
another  people,  due  to  the  practice  of  this 
erroneous  doctrine  of  "small  families." 
According  to  statistics  gathered  by  a  lead- 
ing magazine  published  in  New  York,  a 
year  or  two  ago,  the  average  number  of 
children  to  a  family  among  the  descend- 
ants of  the  old  American  stock  in  the  New 
England  states  was  only  two  and  a  frac- 
tion, while  among  the  immigrants  from 
European  shores,  who  are  now  coming  into 
our  land,  the  average  family  was  com- 
posed of  more  than  six. 

Thus  the  old  stock  is  surely  being  re- 


Shrinking  Progeny  139 

placed  by  the  " lower  classes,"  of  a  stur- 
dier and  more  worthy  race.  W°rtbder 
because  they  have  not  learned,  in  these 
modern  times,  to  disregard  the  great  com- 
mandment given  to  man  by  our  Heavenly 
Father.  It  is,  indeed,  a  case  of  the  sur- 
vival of  the  fittest,  and  it  is  only  a  matter 
of  time  before  those  who  so  strongly  ad- 
vocate and  practice  this  pernicious  doc- 
trine of  " birth-control"  and  the  limiting 
of  the  number  of  children  in  the  family 
will  have  legislated  themselves  and  their 
kind  out  of  this  mortal  existence. 

Our  government  in  1917  was  demand- 
ing a  trained  force  of  five  millions  of  men 
for  the  World  War  in  anticipation  of  the 
very  danger  that  I  have  outlined.  Let  us 
thank  God  that  we  to-day  can  give  to  our 
national  defense,  if  need  be,  ten  millions 
of  men,  for  the  reason  that  those  who  have 
come  to  our  shores,  except  the  so-called 
nearly  extinct  " Yankee,"  have  indulged 
in  the  old-fashioned  " vulgar"  physical 
progeny  methods,  rather  than  in  the  cap- 
ers of  those  who  burn  in  their  lusts  one 
toward  another  and  burrow  in  the  filth  of 
unnatural  commerce,  rendering  abortive 


140     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

sexual  enterprises  and  salting  maternal 
plants. 

A  frontier  defense,  composed  of  flesh 
and  blood,  such  as  the  World  War  pre- 
sented, is  not  spun  from  threads  of  silver 
or  gold,  nor  does  it  come  from  Richard- 
son's " non-child-bearing  women." 

Unless  those  amongst  us  who  corres- 
pond to  the  ancient  burghers  and  peasants 
are  encouraged  by  social  laws  to  marry 
and  multiply,  who  will  man  our  dread- 
noughts, sight  our  coast  guns  on  the  in- 
vader, enforce  an  orderly  civilization, 
keep  the  idle,  lazy  wealthy  from  hunger 
and  filth,  run  our  mines,  shops,  factories, 
and  railroads,  and  do  all  the  menial  work 
of  the  nation? 

You  cannot  grow  an  oat  crop  on  an  as- 
phalt pavement;  neither  will  progeny 
sprout  in  a  sandy  uterus  nor  spring  into 
being  in  a  surgically  raked  ovarian  gar- 
den. Unless  those  endowed  by  nature  for 
progeneration  are  permitted  frequently 
to  test  their  virility,  regardless  of  family 
tree  or  physical  contour,  the  Lady  Eglan- 
tines of  the  future  may  as  well  save  the 


Shrinking  Progeny  141 

wear  and  tear  of  laying  314  eggs  in  365 
days,  because  Richardson's  prognosti- 
cated non-child-bearing  Amazons  will 
soon  solve  the  problem  of  the  food  supply. 

No  great  amount  of  printer's  ink  need 
be  used  in  efforts  to  shrink  the  progeny 
output. 

The  withering  effect  of  diversified  tech- 
nical sexual  knowledge  used  against  off- 
spring, unknown  to  the  woman  of  a  cen- 
tury ago,  is  apparent  in  every  compilation 
of  vital  statistics  and  is  emphasized  by 
the  few  or  no  children  in  the  families  of 
the  wealthy  and  in  the  great  reduction 
thereof  amongst  the  middle  classes. 

The  cause  of  this  social  condition 
springs  from  a  general  moral  relaxation 
and  cirrhosis  of  the  conscience,  stimulated 
by  the  doctrine  of  sex  equality,  taught  in 
female  colleges  and  on  the  rostrum  and  in- 
culcated with  socialism ;  and  still  further 
impressed  by  social-sin  literature,  the  eas- 
iest way  on  the  stage,  a  trousseau  of  hair 
and  hints  in  vaudeville,  leg-locking,  um- 
bilical chafing,  breast-pressing  and  pla- 
tonic  commerce  in  the  ballroom,  which  f  re- 


142     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

quently  lead  lambs  to  their  doom  and 
sheep  to  a  change  of  pasture. 

In  New  South  Wales,  dominated  by 
socialism  and  suffragists,  the  evidence 
given  before  the  Royal  Commission,  by 
doctors,  clergymen,  and  druggists,  and 
subjected  to  a  sifting  cross-examination, 
proved  that  the  women  generally  ex- 
pressed the  desire  to  avoid  maternity  and 
took  positive  action  to  that  end. 

A  feminist,  Lydia  K.  Commander,  in 
her  book  upon  this  subject,  says: 

The  knowledge  of  how  to  control  fam- 
ily scarcely  existed  in  America  two  gen- 
erations ago.  Now  it  is  practically  uni- 
versal. To-day  thousands  of  physicans  in 
this  country  make  a  practice  of  dissemin- 
ating the  knowledge  of  how  to  avoid  chil- 
dren. The  vast  majority  know  how  to 
control  the  size  of  the  family  and  do  so 
deliberately. 

Let  me  add  that  the  old  custom  of  going 
downstairs  head  first  on  the  hands  and 
knees  and  taking  pennyroyal  tea  have 
long  since  been  abandoned  as  emmena- 
gogues, 


Shrinking  Progeny  143 

The  greater  the  female  liberty  and  in- 
tellectual attainment  the  more  dormant 
is  the  maternal  instinct. 

One  authority  states  that  "half  the  col- 
lege woman  graduates  do  not  marry,  and 
a  quarter  of  those  who  do  marry  are  child- 
less." 

The  social  pullets,  and  engaged  couples, 
discuss  with  amazing  frankness  the  num- 
ber of  children  they  will  have,  if  any,  and 
the  conditions  under  which  they  will  con- 
sent to  bear  them. 

Miss  Gertrude  Barnum,  connected  with 
the  Federal  Department  of  Labor,  refers 
deploringly  to  what  she  terms  "the  third 
sex  in  industry."  Her  definition  is: 

In  general,  it  is  a  group,  divorced  from 
the  women  who  believe  that  women's 
sphere  is  the  home,  and  from  the  coeduca- 
tionists  in  labor  who  believe  that  women 
should  receive  labor  education  with  men 
and  should  cooperate  with  men  in  raising 
the  working  standards  of  both  men  and 
women.  This  group  believes  it  should 
work  primarily  for  women  and  against 
men.  Most  of  the  active  ones  are  unmar- 
ried. 


144     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

There  is  in  the  world  a  lot  of  militant, 
mouthy  hall  trees  for  petticoats,  who  are 
generally  sexually  unemployed,  and  who 
spend  their  time  advocating  the  torch,  dis- 
seminating socially  baneful  literature,  dis- 
charging cargoes  of  soap-box  gas  upon 
street  groups,  and  in  breeding  discontent 
amongst  a  class  of  women  who  would  be 
happy  if  let  alone,  and  finally  advising 
those  under  the  connubial  yoke  to  sand 
the  copulatory  track  and  sexually  starve 
their  husbands  into  buglers  in  the  cause 
of  equal  rights. 

How  many  inflammatory  he-orators 
and  cupbearers  are  in  the  ranks  of  the 
"eruptionists"  through  sexual  starvation 
rather  than  through  any  innate  conviction, 
thereby  encouraging  and  augmenting  the 
ever-increasing  number  of  women  who  are 
hostile  to  maintaining  such  a  birth  rate 
as  will  enable  the  nation  to  repel  the  in- 
vader, protect  its  institutions  established 
by  the  blood  of  the  sons  of  heroic  women 
and  to  continue  to  secure  to  her  citizens 
peace  and  plenty? 

Persistent  attempts  to  parry  the  laws 


Shrinking  Progeny  145 

of  progeny  sooner  or  later  will  lead  na- 
ture to  rebellion,  the  physique  to  emacia- 
tion, the  individual  to  the  tortures  of  the 
damned  here,  with  all  of  the  diversifica- 
tion of  hell  hereafter. 

In  furtherance  of  these  soul-destroying 
and  body-wrecking  indulgences,  a  world- 
wide propaganda  sneaks  its  literature  and 
missionaries  into  the  homes  of  our  people 
to  poison  contentment,  sow  the  seeds  of 
sexual  rebellion  against  natural  coition, 
and  instruct  married  women  in  the  use 
of  the  anticonception  mask. 

Ben  Beitman,  when  placed  on  trial  in 
Rochester  January  24,  1917,  for  selling 
birth-control  literature,  presented  to  the 
court  a  petition  signed  by  450  persons 
protesting  against  his  arrest  and  demand- 
ing his  release.  Mrs.  Ada  Chase  Dudley, 
one  of  his  supporters  declared:  "Common 
sense  is  the  keynote  of  the  birth-control 
propaganda,  and  I  am  heartily  in  favor 
of  the  movement." 

Mrs.  Ethel  Byrne,  a  birth-control  mis- 
sionary, while  a  guest  at  Blackwell's 
Island  for  distributing  some  of  the  devil's 


146     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

best  productions,  observed:  "It  is  only 
a  question  of  time  before  people  will  un- 
derstand. I  felt  that  we  owed  a  debt  to 
society.  We  are  seeking  to  lighten  the 
burden  of  womankind." 

Sexual  eunuchs  are  increasing  rapidly 
among  church  patrons  and  society-hunt- 
ers, while  free-love  tendencies  and  yearn- 
ing for  social  freedom,  are  breeding  a  vast 
army  of  "neuters"  among  the  women, 
who  "are  neither  fish,  nor  flesh,  nor  good 
red  herring." 

Those  women  who  dodge  maternity  and 
fondle  poodles,  and  leave  their  dogs  with 
the  check  maids  in  church  basements, 
while  they  proclaim  on  the  floor  above 
that  they  are  glad  that  they  are  not  like 
the  poor  publican  at  the  door,  recently 
received  a  shock  from  Rev.  George  Hugh 
Birney,  of  Cleveland,  pastor  of  the  fash- 
ionable Euclid  Avenue  Methodist  Church. 
He  astounded  his  wealthy  and  practically 
childless  congregation  by  deploring  the 
absence  of  children  in  the  homes  of  the 
rich  and  the  development  of  a  "third  sex" 
amongst  the  women. 


Shrinking  Progeny  147 

"If  I  were  asked  to  indicate  the  one 
most  ominous  sign  of  the  times,  I  would 
indicate  the  unsexed  woman,"  said  Dr. 
Birney.  "In  the  craze  for  freedom  from 
all  restraints,  both  religious  and  social, 
the  new  woman  is  under  the  temptation 
of  disregarding  both  her  nature  and  her 
soul. 

"We  are  told  of  a  ' third  sex'  created 
by  the  European  war,  due  to  the  changing 
status  of  both  women  and  men,  particu- 
larly the  women  outgrowing  their  mat- 
ernal instincts. 

"Such  a  *  neuter'  sex  has  been  afflicting 
America  for  two  generations.  It  is  rep- 
resented by  the  woman  who  cares  more 
for  puppies  than  babies  and  who  thinks  it 
more  genteel  to  coddle  a  cold-nosed  poodle 
than  to  sing  cradle  lullabies." 

It  is  well  known  to  all  students  of  social 
conditions  that  there  is  a  steadily  grow- 
ing revolt  against  child-bearing.  The 
world- wide  decline  in  the  birth  rate  of  our 
people  is  not  so  much  due  to  temporal 
conditions  as  to  volitionary  sterility  or 
the  use  of  artificial  preventives.  The 


148     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

"massacre  of  the  innocents"  by  the  tools 
of  the  devil  shows  how  widely  neo-Mal- 
thusianism  has  rooted  itself  in  the  hearts 
and  homes  of  our  people;  and  the  time 
is  not  so  far  distant  when  we  may  be 
called  to  realize  that  this  canker  is  threat- 
ening not  only  our  national  life  but  the 
paleface  with  extinction. 

Letters  from  the  working  women  pub- 
lished in  Maternity,  1915,  page  94,  contain 
these  sad  and  devastating  confessions 
from  women  who  have  taken  a  definite 
stand  against  maternity. 

One  writes : 

If  ever  I  have  the  opportunity,  I  shall 
certainly  advise  all  young  men  and  women 
about  to  marry  to  avoid  having  any  chil- 
dren. 

Another  writes : 

After  this  (suffering  from  childbirth) 
I  said  to  a  friend  one  day,  "If  only  I 
could  feel  that  this  was  my  last  I  would 
be  quite  happy."  "Well,"  she  replied, 
"why  don't  you  make  it  your  last?"  and 
she  gave  me  advice.  As  a  result  of  this 
knowledge  I  had  no  more  for  four  and  a 


Shrinking  Progeny  149 

half  years.  I  sometimes  think  that  the 
Great  Almighty  has  heard  the  poor  wo- 
man in  travail,  and  shows  her  a  way  of 
rest. 

Another  woman  wrote : 

When  at  the  end  of  ten  years  I  was 
almost  a  wreck,  I  determined  that  this 
state  of  things  should  not  go  on  any 
longer,  and  if  there  was  no  natural  means 
of  prevention,  then,  of  course,  artificial 
means  must  be  employed,  which  were  suc- 
cessful, and  I  am  happy  to  say  that  from 
that  time  I  have  been  able  to  take  pretty 
good  care  of  myself. 

The  noted  English  priest,  Father 
Bernard  Vaughan,  in  an  article  of  recent 
date  upon  this  subject,  gives  the  following 
extracts  from  letters  received  by  him 
along  the  lines  under  discussion. 

If  mothers  will  be  wise,  they  will  try  not 
to  bring  poor  boys  into  the  world ;  let  the 
ones  that  talk  have  the  boys ;  give  us  food 
and  we  will  have  children. 

Another  one  wrote : 

If  you  want  the  cradles  filled,  shut  up 
the  shops  in .  Render  it  by  legisla- 


150     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

tion  impossible  to  buy  anywhere  artificial 
checks  on  population.  Young  people,  and 
just  now  many  soldiers,  marry  with  the 
deliberate  intention  of  preventing  fam- 
ilies. 

Still  another  wrote : 

If  the  shops  in were  shut  up  and 

the  vending  or  possession  of  the  things 
they  sell  made  a  penal  offense,  it  would 
tend  to  prevent  the  decline  in  births.  I 
can  point  to  one  fellow  living  at  the  rate 
of  fifteen  hundred  pounds  per  annum, 
said  to  be  a  partner  in  such  a  business. 

Another  one  wrote : 

If  I  had  my  time  over  again  I  would 
have  an  empty  cradle.  I  love  my  children 
and  they  love  me,  and  I  miss  my  pet  every 
day.  I  am  pleased  to  say  I  have  only  two 
little  girls;  I  hope  they  will  never  fill  a 
cradle. 

And  one  wrote : 

Why  are  you  so  down  upon  the  women  ? 
Blame  the  men.  But  for  the  men,  who 
want  a  good  time  and  money  to  bet  on 
horses  or  anything  at  all,  there  would  be 
thousands  of  more  babies  born  in  Eng- 
land. 


Shrinking  Progeny  151 

Another  one  wrote : 

Before  you  begin  to  preach  from  the 
text  "Fill  the  cradle/'  kindly  arrange 
with  Government  and  municipal  authori- 
ties to  provide  standing  room  for  the 
cradle.  I  have  four  kiddies  of  my  own, 
and  my  husband  somewhere  in  France. 
Do  you  think  people  will  let  me  rooms'? 
Not  a  bit  of  it — me  and  my  children  are 
beggars  and  wanderers.  Nobody  will  have 
my  children,  and  municipal  tenement 
houses  are  no  better.  Wherever  I  go  I 
am  told,  "We  can't  have  them,"  and  I 
am  turned  into  the  streets. 

Another  one  touched  upon  an  actual 
condition  so  apparent  in  the  social  centers 
of  our  own  country  that  it  has  a  peculiarly 
strong  and  convincing  application  here, 
which  should  be  condemned  by  all  sen- 
sible and  morally  inclined  people.  This 
woman  wrote : 

I  have  three  lovely  children,  and  my 
husband  is  always  asking  for  more,  but 
if  you  knew  the  ridicule  and  banter  it  has 
subjected  me  to  from  my  women  friends 
you  would  not  blame  but  pity  me.  They 
swarm  around  you,  and  just  when  you 


152     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

need  sympathy  most  of  all  they  pour  out 
vitriol  into  your  soul,  saying,  "How  can 
you  be  so  silly?  It  is  so  middle-class  to 
have  more  than  two,  so  vulgar  and  im- 
moral. Why,  you  surely  don't  want  to 
take  your  ideals  from  the  farmyard,  or 
from  the  rabbit-warren?"  Is  it  really 
immoral,  Father,  to  have  a  big  family? 
Anyhow,  nothing  in  this  world  would  in- 
duce me  to  go  through  these  sneers  and 
jeers  again. 

Sounding  brass,  tinkling  cymbals, 
church  organs,  vesper  bells,  the  hope  of 
heaven  and  Christ  crucified  should  lead 
this  nation  to  the  shrine  of  William  Al- 
bright at  Clearfield,  Pennsylvania,  who, 
on  March  3,  1917,  at  the  age  of  sixty-five, 
offered  himself  and  fourteen  sons  to  Presi- 
dent Wilson  for  service  in  the  army  and 
also  his  seven  daughters  for  Red  Cross 
work  in  case  of  war. 

Of  almost  equal  value  to  the  nation  is 
Ike  Sims,  of  Atlanta,  eighty-seven  years 
old,  who  had  eleven  sons  in  the  service, 
and  proudly  awaited  the  call  of  three 
more  at  home. 

E.  C.  Bland,  a  Carolina  farmer,  vigor- 


Shrinking  Progeny  153 

cms  at  sixty-five  years,  twice  married,  is 
the  father  of  thirty-four  children  of 
whom  twenty-six  are  living. 

The  second  Mrs.  Bland  is  the  mother  of 
nineteen  of  these  children  and  says  that 
"it  is  as  easy  to  bring  up  fifty  children  as 
it  is  to  raise  ten. " 

One  woman  who  can  make  a  loaf  of 
bread,  patch  trousers,  milk  a  cow,  and  lov- 
ingly reign  in  her  home  as  wife  and 
mother,  is  worth  vastly  more  to  this  gen- 
eration than  all  the  poodle-combers,  side- 
walk gigglers,  footlight  favorites,  social 
swill  hunters,  bridge-whist  gamblers  and 
progeny-shrinkers  that  could  be  packed 
in  the  Louisiana  Purchase. 

One  plow-holding  Bland  is  of  more  in- 
trinsic value  to  any  woman,  or  nation,  than 
all  the  sponge-brained,  cuff-necked,  rain- 
bow-legged, beer-soaked  lust  scavengers 
that  ever  sneaked  into  life  from  the  sand 
lots  of  maternity. 

On  November  20,  1916,  a  band  of  nasty 
anticonception  device  demonstrators  were 
assembled  at  the  home  of  their  noted 
leader  in  New  York  City,  planning  the 


154     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

continuance  of  the  birth-control  clinic, 
for  the  carrying  on  of  which  Mrs.  Mar- 
garet Sanger  was  then  awaiting  trial, 
when  the  shocking  news  reached  them  that 
at  least  one  married  woman  had  lived  and 
died  clean,  and  proposed  to  aid  others  of 
her  sex  to  do  the  same  by  setting  aside 
three  millions  of  dollars  to  be  used  for  the 
training  of  girls  for  motherhood.  The  be- 
quest of  this  God-fearing  woman,  Mrs. 
Lizzie  M.  Palmer,  is  accompanied  by  the 
statement 

I  hold  profoundly  the  conviction  that 
the  welfare  of  any  community  is  insepar- 
ably dependent  upon  the  quality  of  its 
motherhood  and  the  spirit  and  character 
of  its  homes. 

Paul,  while  developing  Christianity, 
proclaimed  the  Palmer  doctrine.  He 
wrote : 

I  will,  therefore,  that  the  young  women 
marry,  bear  children,  guide  the  house,  give 
no  occasion  to  the  adversary  to  speak  re- 
proachfully. 


Shrinking  Progeny  155 

Very  likely  the  Birth  Control  League 
would  regard  the  teachings  of  Christ  and 
Paul  as  obsolete,  and  out  of  harmony  with 
the  advanced  thought  of  the  present-day 
disciples  of  his  satanic  majesty. 

You  can't  build  a  nation  on  a  mother- 
hood who  "  conceive  chaff  and  bring  forth 
stubble,"  but  rather  on  the  wives  of  the 
land  who  cry  out  unto  their  husbands,  as 
did  Eachel  of  old  unto  Jacob,  "Give  me 
children,  or  else  I  die." 

Social  conditions  have  greatly  changed 
since  the  sentimental  appeal  of  Rachel. 
Now  the  wife  says,  "No  children";  the 
servant  says  "No  children" ;  and  the  land- 
lord says,  "No  children." 

Infanticide  and  abortion  were  approved 
by  Aristotle  and  the  legal  destruction  of 
weak  and  deformed  children  was  also  ad- 
vocated by  him ;  as  it  is  now  by  many  who 
stand  in  church  and  sing:  "My  eyes  have 
seen  the  glory  of  the  coming  of  the  Lord." 

These  abominations  are  now  practiced 
by  the  sexual  blank-cartridge  artists,  the 
doorstep  and  hallway  harlots,  and  the  un- 
natural mothers  who  abandon  their  illicit 


156     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

fruit  to  the  charity  of  strangers,  and  are 
also  advocated  by  professional  fame- 
seekers,  teatman  educators,  spurious  phi- 
losophers and  some  gospel-pounders. 

How  many  sepulchers,  fair  without  but 
foul  within,  are  walking  amongst  us  to- 
day, with  an  M.D.  on  their  breeches,  who 
feed  on  the  ruptured  seals  of  the  temples 
of  unborn  babes,  and  drink  of  the  drip- 
pings of  carnality  9 

I  asked  a  young  man  of  my  acquaint- 
ance who  had  been  married  for  two  or 
three  years  if  he  had  any  children.  He 
said,  "No,  and  I  thank  God  for  it." 

Natural  laws  are  buffeted,  statutory 
laws  are  defied,  and  happiness,  health, 
sanity,  liberty,  life,  and  even  death  are 
gambled  with  to  avoid  conception.  It  is 
through  such  a  hell  that  many  expect  to 
reach  heaven. 

Men  of  genius  have  spent  countless 
nights  in  the  laboratories  of  the  world  in 
quest  of  life  elixirs  and  germicides  to  pro- 
long human  existence. 

On  the  other  hand,  doctors,  chemists,  in- 
ventors, and  tradesmen  have  wearied  sci- 


Shrinking  Progeny  157 

ence  in  efforts  to  derail  the  sequence  of 
sexual  acts. 

Millions  of  dollars  are  annually  spent 
to  check  contagious  diseases  destructive 
of  man,  but  no  worthy,  effective  efforts 
are  attempted  to  induce  maternity,  or  to 
stay  the  wholesale  destruction  of  embry- 
onic life. 

Recently  in  England  the  question  of  ap- 
propriating twenty-five  thousand  dollars 
in  aid  of  needy  expectant  mothers  was  un- 
der consideration,  but  failed  of  favorable 
action  because  of  the  large  amount  re- 
quired, while  an  appropriation  of  forty 
thousand  dollars  for  dog-breeding  passed 
without  dissent. 

How  different  the  world  would  be  mor- 
ally if  the  married  could  be  made  to  feel 
that  matrimony  without  children  is  like 
a  vine  and  no  grapes,  a  lantern  and  no 
candle,  a  brook  with  no  water  gushing  and 
gurgling  in  its  channel. 

Through  lack  of  offspring,  in  the  words 
of  Solomon,  "the  memory  of  the  prosper- 
ous wicked  shall  rot." 

Colonel  Roosevelt,  the  Lar  of  the  Ameri- 


158     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

can  households  and  one  of  the  most  chiv- 
alrous sons  of  the  goddess  of  Liberty,  in 
his  sixth  annual  message  to  Congress, 
upon  the  subject  of  home  and  offspring, 
said: 

When  home  ties  are  loosened,  when  men 
and  women  cease  to  regard  a  worthy  fam- 
ily life,  with  all  its  duties  fully  performed 
and  all  its  responsibilities  lived  up  to,  as 
the  life  best  worth  living,  then  evil  days 
for  the  commonwealth  are  at  hand.  There 
are  regions  in  our  land,  and  classes  of  our 
population,  where  the  birth  rate  has  sunk 
below  the  death  rate.  Surely  it  should 
need  no  demonstration  to  show  that  willful 
sterility  is,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  hu- 
man race,  the  one  sin  for  which  the  penalty 
is  national  death,  race  death — a  sin  for 
which  there  is  no  atonement. 

On  his  way  home  from  his  Egyptian 
hunting  trip  Mr.  Roosevelt  in  Paris,  be- 
fore a  distinguished  representation  of 
every  department  of  French  life,  with 
characteristic  courage  and  boldness,  said 
to  them : 

You  have  every  element  of  leadership 
among  nations  except  in  population  which 


Shrinking  Progeny  159 

seems  to  be  decreasing.     The  remedy  is 
in  your  own  hands.    Stop  race  suicide. 

If  Paul  in  his  letter  to  the  Galatians, 
A.D.  58,  truthfully  mapped  out  man's  only 
highway  to  God,  restricted,  narrow,  and 
rugged  though  it  may  seem,  the  twen- 
tieth-century children  of  the  same  God 
have  no  license  to  broaden  or  feather  that 
highway.  Paul  clearly  specified  the  prac- 
tices that  will  close  heaven  to  the  guilty. 

He  wrote: 

Now  the  works  of  the  flesh  are  manifest, 
which  are  these :  adultery,  fornication,  un- 
cleanness,  lasciviousness,  idolatry,  witch- 
craft, hatred,  variance,  emulations,  wrath, 
strife,  seditions,  heresies,  envyings,  mur- 
ders, drunkenness,  revelings,  and  such 
like :  of  the  which  I  tell  you  before,  as  I 
have  also  told  you  in  time  past,  that  they 
which  do  such  things  shall  not  inherit 
the  kingdom  of  God. 

In  defiance  of  the  teachings  of  Paul,  at 
a  convention  in  October,  1920,  at  Utica, 
New  York,  the  New  York  State  tiptoe  sin 
funnels  and  idle  moral  bandits,  votaries  of 
a  sisterhood  who  operate  through  a  club 


160     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

confederacy,  passed  a  resolution  to  work 
for  the  abolition  of  all  restraining  laws 
touching  offspring,  and  for  the  free  dis- 
semination among  women  of  the  medical 
knowledge  essential  to  the  prevention  and 
control  of  offspring. 

To  this  a  vain  protest  was  made  by 
many  of  the  clean,  Christian  family-build- 
ers who  wear  upon  their  breasts  the  shin- 
ing shield  of  " mother,"  while  the  timid 
defenders  of  embryonic  life  sat  chagrined 
and  mantled  with  shame. 

The  tillers  of  sapless  breasts  that  have 
never  felt  the  warmth  or  thrill  of  an  in- 
fant's hand  should  read  and  imbibe,  if  not 
for  their  own,  then  for  their  nation's, 
good,  the  sentiments  of  that  clean,  intel- 
lectual English  lady,  Margot  Tennant,  who 
was  called  "The  Dragon  Fly"  because  of 
her  reedlike  figure,  and  the  "Woman  with 
a  Serpent's  Tongue"  by  poet  Watson  be- 
cause of  her  fiery  wit,  and  who  was  wooed 
and  finally  won  by  Herbert  Asquith,  then 
Prime  Minister  of  Great  Britain.  This 
noted,  well-poised,  social  queen  heard  the 


Shrinking  Progeny  161 

whisperings  on  the  other  shore  in  three 
maternal  efforts. 

In  her  diary  she  wrote : 

There  are  many  kinds  of  love,  but  the 
greatest  is  the  mother's  for  her  child.  In 
spite  of  France's  genius  and  courage  it 
would  be  a  greater  country  if  it  produced 
more  children. 

The  excuse  given  for  limitation  of  fami- 
lies is  usually  one  of  expense ;  the  expres- 
sion signifying  that  a  child  is  an  encum- 
brance always  jars  on  me.  I  would  like 
to  have  ten  children,  in  spite  of  the  poig- 
nant emotion  that  loving  two  has  caused 
and  still  causes  me. 

Jacob  referred  to  his  offspring  as  "the 
Children  which  God  has  graciously  given 
Thy  servant." 

St.  Luke  wrote : 

And  they  brought  unto  him  also  infants, 
that  he  would  touch  them:  but  when  his 
disciples  saw  it,  they  rebuked  them. 

But  Jesus  called  them  unto  him  and 
said,  Suffer  little  children  to  come  unto 
me,  and  forbid  them  not:  for  of  such  is 
the  kingdom  of  God. 


162     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

Senator  Reed,  of  Missouri,  on  June  29, 
1921,  learnedly  and  eloquently  opposed  the 
passage  of  the  child-welfare  bill,  the  ob- 
jective of  which  is  to  subject  mothers  and 
children  to  the  pad-and-pencil  guidance  of 
myriads  of  she  celibates,  who  couldn't 
tell  a  labor  pain  from  the  creak  of  a  wheel- 
barrow, but  who  do  know  that  Congress 
appropriated  $1,480,000  to  enforce  the 
provisions  of  this  Bolshevik  bill,  and  who 
do  know  that  most  of  it  will  go  to  the  dry 
stock  in  the  herd  of  maternity  bell-ringers, 
who  will  be  turned  loose  upon  the  homes 
of  the  nation  as  fast  as  the  system  can  be 
extended. 

The  doctrine  of  the  right  of  State  visi- 
tation and  home  espionage  will  not  long 
be  tolerated  in  a  country  whose  sons  re- 
cently emerged  from  a  world  war  fought 
on  the  sublime  theory  of  a  world  de- 
mocracy. Will  the  sleuthing  authorized 
by  this  child-welfare  bill  extend  to  the 
homes  of  wealth?  If  not,  the  hounds 
should  be  held  in  leash. 

Bills  of  this  character  are  brooders  sit- 
ting on  vipers'  eggs,  and  the  theorists  and 


Shrinking  Progeny  163 

alleged  reformers  who  conceive  and  bring 
them  forth,  forget,  or  never  knew,  that 
substituting  the  new  for  the  old  and  tried 
led  to  the  French  Revolution  which  abol- 
ished law  and  religion,  renamed  the  weeks 
and  ignored  the  Christian  calendar,  closed 
the  courts  of  justice  and  trampled  prop- 
erty rights,  condemned  to  banishment  or 
death  entire  classes  of  the  people,  in  the 
wake  of  which  slaughter  followed,  until 
the  guillotine  groaned  under  its  labors, 
and  the  gutters  flowed  with  the  blood  of 
the  slain. 

Senator  Reed  in  his  crushing  analysis 
of  the  child- welfare  bill  said : 

One  of  the  worst  products  of  the  late 
war  was  the  idea  that  the  State  should 
take  charge  of  the  individual  citizen. 
That  noxious  plan  reached  its  highest  de- 
gree in  Russia.  It  was  asserted  there  that 
every  child  was  the  ward  of  the  govern- 
ment ;  that  parents  were  incapable  of  rear- 
ing their  children,  according  to  the  high 
notions  of  the  reformers;  that  mother- 
hood and  birth-control  should  be  estab- 
lished by  law  and  the  child  taken  from  its 
mother's  care  and  turned  over  to  public 


164    Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

officers.  On  top  of  all  that  the  State  was 
to  take  charge  of  the  mother  and  pension 
her,  so  that,  being  the  supporter  of  the 
mother,  it  could  assert  the  right  to  dictate 
her  course  of  conduct. 

Senator  Reed,  at  another  point  in  his 
speech,  vibrating  under  the  spell  of  a 
righteous  indignation  and  aglow  with  pat- 
riotic fire,  exclaimed : 

When  we  employ  female  celibates  to  in- 
struct mothers  how  to  raise  babies  they 
have  brought  into  the  earth,  do  we  not  in- 
dulge in  a  rare  bit  of  irony?  I  repeat  I 
cast  no  reflection  on  unmarried  ladies. 
Perhaps  some  of  them  are  too  good  to  have 
husbands.  But  any  woman  who  is  too 
refined  to  have  a  husband  should  not  un- 
dertake the  care  of  another  woman's  baby 
when  that  other  woman  wants  to  take  care 
of  it  herself. 

A  wise  man  places  all  important  tasks 
in  experienced  hands.  He  does  not  en- 
gage as  a  civil  engineer  a  man  who  has 
never  seen  a  level;  as  a  doctor,  a  person 
unacquainted  with  anatomy;  or  as  an  in- 
structor in  music,  an  individual  ignorant 
of  its  notes.  Is  it  not  the  height  of  un- 
wisdom to  delegate  the  solution  of  prob- 


Shrinking  Progeny  165 

lems  of  child-bearing  and  child-care  to  a 
woman  who  has  not  had  the  experience  of 
motherhood,  and  very  possibly  does  not 
so  desire,  or  to  a  bachelor  girl  who  never 
beheld  in  a  baby's  eyes  the  mirrored  vision 
of  a  mother's  tender  love,  nor  watched  the 
loving  dimples  in  a  baby's  cheek  gather  to 
welcome  a  mother's  rapturous  kiss? 

What  I  have  said  and  shall  say  I  mean 
to  apply  to  the  members  of  the  Children's 
Bureau,  including  its  servants,  agents,  and 
employees,  substantially  all  of  whom  en- 
joy the  blissful  and  seemingly  perpetual 
state  of  single  blessedness. 

I  care  not  how  estimable  the  office-hold- 
ing spinster  may  be,  nor  how  her  heart 
may  throb  for  the  dream  children  she  does 
not  possess,  her  yearnings  cannot  be  sub- 
stituted for  a  mother's  experience.  Offi- 
cial meddling  cannot  take  the  place  of 
mother  love.  Mother  love!  The  golden 
cord  that  stretches  from  the  throne  of 
God,  uniting  all  animate  creation  to  divin- 
ity. Its  light  gleams  down  the  path  of 
time  from  barbarous  ages,  when  savage 
women  held  their  babes  to  almost  fam- 
ished breasts  and  died  that  they  might 
live.  Its  holy  flame  glows  as  bright  in 
hovels  where  poverty  breaks  a  meager 
crust  as  in  palaces  where  wealth  holds 


166     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

Lucullian  feasts.  It  is  the  one  great  uni- 
versal passion — the  sinless  passion  of  sac- 
rifice. Incomparable  in  its  sublimity,  in- 
terference is  sacrilege,  regulation  is  mock- 
ery. 

The  great  Mohammed,  foreseeing  that 
the  perpetuity  of  his  creed  would  depend 
upon  the  offspring  of  his  followers,  wrote : 
" Paradise  lies  at  the  feet  of  mothers." 

On  Sinai's  blazing  mount  Divinity 
traced  on  stone:  "Thou  shalt  not  kill." 

The  bravest  battle  that  ever  was  fought ! 

Shall  I  tell  you  where  and  when  ? 
On  the  maps  of  the  world  you  will  find  it  not — 

'Twas  fought  by  the  mothers  of  men. 
0 !  Spotless  woman  in  a  world  of  shame ; 

With  splendid  and  silent  scorn, 
Go  back  to  God  as  white  as  you  came — 

The  kingliest  warrior  born. 


CHAPTER  XII 

PREVENTIVES 

THE  agents  of  race  annihilation  extend 
their  activities  to  the  most  unexpected 
places.  Good  authority  states  that  a  pur- 
veyor of  artificial  checks  on  births  sent 
advertisements  to  a  clean  English  lad  just 
out  from  school,  advising  him  to  begin  at 
once  to  learn  all  about  indispensable  out- 
fits for  young  men  wishing  to  see  life. 

In  the  leading  cities  of  the  world  wo- 
men have  become  hardened  upon  this  sub- 
ject to  the  extent  that  they  stop  at  the 
shop  windows,  particularly  in  Europe, 
where  the  devil's  implements  lie  in  plain 
sight,  and  very  quietly  discuss  the  quality 
and  effectiveness  of  the  various  articles 
with  each  other,  without  a  twitch  or  a 
blush  showing  on  their  enameled  and 
powdered  faces. 

The  renowned  Cardinal  Mercier,  in  a 

167 


168     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

pastoral  to  his  people  before  the  War, 
warned  them  that  : 

An  abominable  propaganda,  carried  on 
by  means  of  lectures,  pamphlets,  newspa- 
per articles,  and  practical  demonstration, 
encourages  the  suppression  of  child-bear- 
ing, and  induces  parents  to  adopt  homi- 
cidal practices,  in  circumstances  and  to  an 
extent  hitherto  unheard  of.  Little  by 
little,  into  every  class  of  society,  there  ni- 
ters a  series  of  rotten,  unwholesome  ideas, 
which  threaten  danger  to  the  child,  if  they 
do  not  render  parenthood  wholly  con- 
temptible. Very  soon  parenthood  will  be 
viewed  not  as  a  duty  but  as  a  burden  so 
inconvenient  that  it  may  be,  nay,  ought  to 
be,  thrown 


The  British  Medical  Association  in 
alarm  passed  the  following  resolution  in 
1905: 

That  the  growing  use  of  contra-concep- 
tives  and  ecbolics  is  fraught  with  grave 
danger  both  to  the  individual  and  to  the 
race,  and  that  the  advertisement  and  sale 
of  such  appliances  and.  substances,  as  well 
as  the  publication  and  dissemination  of 
literature  relating  thereto,  should  be  made 
a  penal  offense. 


Preventives  169 

The  eminent  priest,  Bernard  Vaughan 
of  England,  in  a  recent  lecture  to  his 
people  on  the  subject  of  the  "Empty 
Cradle, ' '  said : 

These  moderns,  therefore,  with  their 
new-fangled  doctrines  concerning  what 
they  call  the  just  and  hygienic  limitation 
of  families  by  artificial  checks,  are  charged 
with  spreading  an  immoral  doctrine  that 
degrades  the  individual,  that  ignores  sin, 
and  defies  God.  They  are  endeavoring  by 
their  propaganda  to  bring  this  Christian 
country  of  ours,  with  its  splendid  tradi- 
tions and  with  its  multitudes  of  justice- 
loving,  law-abiding,  God-fearing  citizens 
to  a  shameful  and  nameless  tomb. 

Our  only  hope  of  a  future  fertile,  rug- 
ged race  lies  in  a  reversion  to  the  God- 
given  rules  of  Adam,  who,  having  been 
lifted  from  Eden  on  the  toe  of  the  boot  of 
sin,  and  dropped  in  an  untamed  world, 
seems  to  have;  successfully  met  the  re- 
quirements of  the  Divine  law,  "  Increase 
and  multiply,"  without  special  instruc- 
tions, first  aids,  or  satanic  tutorage.  While 
Adam,  like  the  beasts,  had  but  one  un- 


170     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

frilled  rule,  still  after  he  was  eight  hun- 
dred years  he  begat  sons  and  daughters; 
but  it  is  quite  likely,  the  shifty,  scientific 
sexual  progressive  of  our  day  would  re- 
gard his  methods  very  crude. 

Divine  guidance  of  man  never  hurries. 
God  has  no  dials,  calendars,  nor  clocks. 
Time  ends  the  mortal.  Eternity  is  the 
home  of  the  soul.  On  the  highway  of  the 
fleeting  centuries  an  occasional  John  the 
Baptist  appears  to  warn  man  of  his  sins 
and  of  the  wrath  which  awaits  the  human 
viper  satanically  engaged  in  buffeting 
Divinity. 

Mohammed,  St.  Augustine  in  his  youth, 
and  England's  Henry  VIII  never 
wrought  a  sensual  thrill  that  has  not  been 
augmented  and  refined  by  the  pagans  of 
to-day. 

Archbishop  Patrick  J.  Hayes,  like  John 
.the  Baptist,  seeing  the  myriads  of  social 
vipers  in  the  present  generation,  on  the 
seventeenth  of  December,  1921,  issued  a 
Christmas  pastoral  to  be  read  in  more 
than  three  hundred  churches  of  the  arch- 
diocese of  New  York,  in  which  with  an 


Preventives  171 

herculean  club  lie  bangs  the  heads  of  the 
pagan  sin  patriots  of  to-day,  who  bathe, 
perfume,  and  bandage  their  poisoned  and 
scabby  bodies  in  which  their  sin-seared 
souls  are  housed. 

The  Archbishop  commands  his  "faith- 
ful" to  keep  from  their  homes  any  litera- 
ture on  birth-control  as  they  would  an  evil 
spirit. 

The  salient  features  of  his  warning  are 
as  follows : 

The  Christ-child  did  not  stay  His  own 
entrance  into  this  mortal  life  because  His 
mother  was  poor,  roofless,  and  without 
provision  for  the  morrow.  He  knew  that 
the  Heavenly  Father  who  cared  for  the 
lilies  of  the  fields  and  the  birds  of  the  air 
loved  the  children  of  men  more  than 
these. 

Children  troop  down  from  heaven  be- 
cause God  wills  it.  He  alone  has  the  right 
to  stay  their  coming,  while  He  blesses  at 
will  some  homes  with  many,  others  with 
but  a  few  or  with  none  at  all.  They  come 
in  the  one  way  ordained  by  His  wisdom: 
Woe  to  those  who  degrade,  pervert,  or  do 
violence  to  the  law  of  nature  as  fixed  by 


172     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

the  eternal  decree  of  God  Himself !  Even 
though  some  little  angels  in  the  flesh, 
through  the  moral,  mental,  or  physical 
deformity  of  parents,  may  appear  to  hu- 
man eyes  hideous,  misshapen,  a  blot  on 
civilized  society,  we  must  not  lose  sight  of 
this  Christian  thought  that  under,  and 
within,  such  visible  malformation  there 
lives  an  immortal  soul  to  be  saved  and 
glorified  for  all  eternity  among  the  blessed 
in  heaven. 

Heinous  is  the  sin  committed  against 
the  creative  act  of  God,  who  through  the 
marriage  contract  invites  man  and  woman 
to  cooperate  with  him  in  the  propagation 
of  the  human  family.  To  take  life  after 
its  inception  is  a  horrible  crime;  but  to 
prevent  human  life  that  the  Creator  is 
about  to  bring  into  being  is  satanic.  In 
the  first  instance,  the  body  is  killed  while 
the  soul  lives  on;  in  the  latter,  not  only 
a  body  but  an  immortal  soul  is  denied  ex- 
istence in  time  and  in  eternity.  It  has 
been  reserved  to  our  day  to  see  advocated 
shamelessly  the  legalizing  of  such  a  dia- 
bolical thing. 

In  the  name  of  the  Babe  of  Bethlehem, 
whose  law  you  Christian  fathers  and 
mothers  love  and  obey,  stop  your  ears  to 
that  pagan  philosophy,  worthy  of  a  Herod, 


Preventives  173 

which  ignoring  revelation  and  even  human 
wisdom  sets  itself  above  the  law  and  the 
prophets  of  the  old  and  the  new  dispensa- 
tion, of  which  the  Christ-child  is  the  be- 
ginning, the  bond,  and  the  end.  Keep  far 
from  the  sanctuary  of  your  Christian 
homes,  as  you  would  an  evil  spirit,  the 
literature  of  this  unclean  abomination. 
Sin  not  against  children,  who,  after  all, 
are  the  noblest  stimulus  and  protection 
to  marital  affection,  fidelity,  and  conti- 
nency. 

Another  Christian  lesson  the  world 
needs  to  learn  is  God's  law  against  di- 
vorce. Disastrous  beyond  possibility  of 
description  to  society  is  the  condition 
when  women  measure  their  lives  not  by 
the  number  of  their  offspring  but  by  the 
number  of  their  husbands.  Let  us  thank' 
our  Heavenly  Father  for  the  valiant  wo- 
men we  all  know — and  their  name  is  le- 
gion— who  with  the  highest  ideals  of  wife- 
hood  and  motherhood  carry  on  heroically 
the  honor  of  the  family.  Neither  height 
nor  depth,  nor  sorrow  nor  pain,  nor  sin 
of  husband  nor  ingratitude  of  children, 
nor  privation,  nor  loss,  nor  opportunity  of 
comfort,  nor  lure  of  pleasure  can  tempt 
such  noble  women  to  shirk  their  duty  or 
break  up  their  home. 


174     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

To  shirtless  Satan,  and  Ms  willing 
scribes,  I  say:  "One  thing  still  blocks 
your  way:  *  Revealed  Religion,' — not  sired 
by  reason  nor  born  of  knowledge,  but 
rather  the  child  of  love  and  pain  which 
*  lives  between  the  rosy  breasts  of  Hope' 
— this  drive,  a  crushed  and  bleeding  vic- 
tim, from  the  garden  of  the  human  heart 
and  then  your  triumph  will  have  been 
complete.'' 


CHAPTER  XIII 

EYE  OPENING  AT  PUBERTY 

THE  muckologists  are  of  the  opinion 
that  until  they  succeed  in  wiping  out  the 
human  race,  or  in  greatly  limiting  pro- 
geny, the  children,  during  budhood,  should 
be  taught  in  school  or  elsewhere,  the 
meaning  of  sexual  fragrance,  so  that  at 
puberty  they  may  understand  the  process 
of  procreation. 

A  knowledge  of  the  history  of  the  little 
Lacedaemonian  girls  in  the  gymnasiums, 
where  their  limbs  were  trained  to  grace, 
and  their  modesty  to  ruinous  familiarity, 
should  lead  any  clean  man  to  cast  such  a 
suggestion  from  his  mind  with  the  energy 
with  which  he  would  expel  a  viper  from 
his  lap. 

Those  who  would  have  the  bob  veal,  in 
theory,  as  wise  as  the  two-year  old  bull  in 
practice,  succeed  only  in  arousing  curi- 

175 


176     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

osity  and  prematurely  stimulating  irre- 
sponsive functional  tests  which  unseat  the 
valves  of  the  nervous  system,  choke  the 
mind  with  the  carbon  of  sensuality,  sow 
the  land  with  fillies,  fray  natural  laws, 
burst  the  confines  of  morality  and  place 
the  sparrow's  price  upon  chastity. 

The  young  of  animals  are  born  without 
midwives,  suckled  without  rubber,  teethed 
without  dentists,  evacuated  without  doc- 
tors, matured  without  hygiene,  and  repro- 
duced in  kind, — as  the  result  of  a  passive 
observance  of  natural  laws, — and  without 
the  aid  of  the  smoky,  nasty  sexology  which 
infests  the  minds  of  some  of  our  so-called 
advanced  thinkers,  who  have  not  yet 
caught  up  with  the  reasoning  of  the  an- 
cients, but  whose  inflated  egotism  prompts 
them  to  attempt  a  reconstruction  of  the 
race. 

The  fly,  even,  gives  irregular  but  fre- 
quent attention  to  the  subject  of  seed 
time  and  harvest,  not  only  without  the 
suggestion  of  man,  but  in  spite  of  him. 

Rational  and  irrational  animal  life  is 
governed  by  the  same  natural  laws  f  ormu- 


Eye  Opening  at  Puberty        177 

lated  by  a  supernatural  power,  and  if  ani- 
mals profit  by  an  instinctive  observance 
of  them,  why,  then,  should  not  children, 
unprompted,  be  permitted  to  learn  each 
function  from  the  book  of  nature  or  from 
parents. 

A  mature  person  who  would  plant  noxi- 
ous weeds  in  the  kindergarten  of  inno- 
cence under  the  guise  of  essential  knowl- 
edge, or  prematurely  kindle  the  fires  of 
lust  in  the  breasts  of  youth,  should  be 
told,  as  was  Socrates,  who  was  charged 
with  corrupting  the  youth  of  Athens,  that 
he  had  better  save  the  state  the  expense  of 
his  execution. 

Dean  Jones  of  Yale  in  the  World  of 
May  30,  1920,  on  this  subject  said: 

Sex  education  is  much  better  than  for- 
merly ;  but  this  is  one  task  that  I  believe 
very  firmly  must  be  done  in  the  home  and 
not  by  outsiders. 

Let  the  well-meaning  thinkers  and 
teachers  on  this  subject  beware,  lest,  by 
too  early  an  application  of  the  poultice  of 


178     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

knowledge,    corruption    be    prematurely 
drawn  to  the  surface,  for 

Youth  is  ever  apt  to  judge  in  haste, 
And  lose  the  medium  in  the  wild  extreme. 


THE  Law-giver  Moses  laid  the  ax  at  the 
root  of  woman's  domestic  security  and 
turned  the  battering-ram  of  man's  pas- 
sions against  the  temple  of  virtue  when 
he  wrote : 

When  a  man  has  taken  a  wife,  and  mar- 
ried her,  and  it  come  to  pass  that  she 
find  no  favor  in  his  eyes,  because  he  hath 
found  some  uncleanness  in  her:  then  let 
him  write  her  a  bill  of  divorcement,  and 
give  it  in  her  hand  and  send  her  out  of  his 
house. 

From  that  hour  the  sea  of  woman's  de- 
gradation grew  deeper  and  its  restless 
waves  finally  rose  to  submerging  bil- 
lows of  sensuality  on  the  crest  of  which 
she  was  tossed  and  buffeted  until,  in  the 
centers  of  the  highest  culture,  gauged  by 

179 


180     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

the  moral  thermometer,  she  ranked  be- 
low the  beast. 

Thus  did  the  human  race  continue  to 
sow  the  winds  and  reap  the  whirlwinds 
for  centuries  until  Christ  explained  that 
Moses  suffered  the  men  to  write  a  bill  of 
divorcement  because  of  the  stony  condi- 
tion of  the  hearts  around  him,  and,  after 
reaffirming  the  law  proclaimed  on  the  com- 
pletion of  Adam  and  Eve,  He  laid  down 
the  following  law  on  marriage: 

What  therefore  God  has  joined  to- 
gether, let  no  man  put  asunder.  Whoso- 
ever shall  put  away  his  wife  and  marry 
another  committeth  adultery. 

With  the  expansion  of  Christianity  this 
divine  precept  sank  deeply  into  the  hu- 
man heart;  it  swept  from  the  lap  of  the 
Christian  woman  the  nasty  accumulations 
of  centuries;  it  illumined  her  brow  with 
the  halo  of  purity  and  indelibly  stamped 
thereon  the  ennobling  titles  of  wife  and 
mother ;  it  also  rescued  from  the  dark  and 
somber  night  of  sin  and  reestablished  in 


Divorce  181 

pristine  purity  God's  first  social  institu- 
tion, the  human  family. 

The  Church  of  Rome  for  more  than  fif- 
teen dreary  centuries,  during  which  time 
the  human  mind  was  pretty  generally 
coated  with  sensual  and  monetary  soot, 
successfully  fought  the  crowned  and  un- 
crowned stallions  within  her  fold. 

During  the  Middle  Ages  virginity  and 
conjugality  were  fiercely  assailed  by  vas- 
sal and  castle  guarded  Christian  princes 
and  barons  whose  constantly  pampered 
and  ever-welling  lusts  led  them  to  intimi- 
date the  local  clergy  and  defy  even  the 
bishops.  Strange  as  it  may  seem,  these 
sin-soused,  intestinally  pampered  sexual 
gluttons  spewed  with  fear  when  threat- 
ened with  the  Pontifical  anathema. 

No  mortal,  high  up  or  low  down,  with 
fair  skin  or  sexual  itch,  by  military 
threats,  flattery,  bribes,  or  bludgeons  has 
ever  been  able  to  pass  the  portals  of  St. 
Peter 's  with  a  decree  of  divorce. 

Henry  VIII  tugged  violently  and  long 
at  his  connubial  fetters  but  could  get  no 
aid  from  Rome.  The  Church  chose  to 


182     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

lose  Catholic  England  rather  than  to 
break  the  law  of  her  founder  Christ. 

Pope  Innocent  III  compelled  Philip 
Augustus,  the  king  of  France,  to  recall  his 
discarded  lawful  wife  Ingelburga  of  Den- 
mark, and  to  dismiss  from  his  palace  the 
consort  of  his  bed  Agnes  de  Meranie. 

Pius  VII  stood  like  a  wall  of  granite 
against  the  dissolution  of  the  marriage  of 
Jerome  Bonaparte  with  Elizabeth  Patter- 
son. 

Count  Boni  de  Castellane  of  France 
wearied  law  and  precedent  in  a  fruitless 
effort  to  have  Rome  dissolve  his  marriage 
with  Anna  Gould. 

Luther  and  his  brother  reformer  Me- 
lanchthon  decided  that  the  Landgrave  of 
Hesse  was  entitled  to  have  two  contem- 
poraneous wives. 

The  Calling  of  a  Christian  Woman  by 
Rev.  Morgan  Dix,  a  Protestant  bishop  of 
Maine  contains  this  candid  affirmation: 

Laxity  of  opinion  and  teaching  on  the 
sacredness  of  the  marriage  bond  and  on 
the  question  of  divorce  originated  among 
the  Protestants  of  continental  Europe  in 


Divorce  183 

the  sixteenth  century.  It  soon  began  to 
appear  in  the  legislation  of  Protestant 
states  on  that  continent  and  nearly  at  the 
same  time  to  affect  the  laws  of  New  Eng- 
land. From  that  time  to  the  present  it  has 
proceeded  from  one  degree  to  another  in 
this  country,  until  especially  in  New  Eng- 
land and  in  states  most  directly  affected 
by  New  England  opinions  and  usages  the 
Christian  conception  of  the  nature  and 
obligations  of  the  marriage  bond  finds 
scarcely  any  recognition  in  legislation  or 
in  the  prevailing  sentiment  of  the  com- 
munity. 

The  Western  Reserve  is  a  colony 
founded  by  New  England  settlers  in  Ash- 
tabula  County,  Ohio,  concerning  which 
the  census  shows  that  one  marriage  out 
of  every  eight  is  sundered  by  divorce. 

In  the  Northern  Baptist  Convention  on 
May  24,  1916,  upon  the  subject  of  divorce 
Dr.  John  A.  Earle,  president  of  Des 
Moines  College  is  reported  as  having  said : 

I  don't  believe  this  convention  should 
dictate  to  the  ministers.  There  are  many 
just  causes  for  divorce.  I  will  tell  this 
convention  that  if  my  daughter  should 


184     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

marry  a  drunkard  I  would  help  her  get  a 
divorce,  and  drunkenness  is  not  recognized 
by  the  Scriptures  as  a  just  cause.  A  reso- 
lution censuring  ministers  who  officiate  at 
the  marriage  of  divorced  persons  is  not 
in  accord  with  Baptist  democracy. 

Christ  likely  had  not  heard  of  or  antici- 
pated " Baptist  democracy"  when  he  said, 
"  Whosoever  shall  put  away  his  wife  and 
marry  another  committeth  adultery. ' ' 

The  Bureau  of  the  Census  of  the  De- 
partment of  Commerce  and  Labor  made  a 
report  in  1908  on  marriages  and  divorce 
for  the  twenty  years  preceding  1907, 
which  showed  that  one  in  every  twelve 
marriages  ended  in  divorce ;  and  that  the 
divorce  rate  is  higher  in  the  United  States 
than  in  any  other  country  furnishing  sta- 
tistics. In  the  year  1906,  there  were 
granted  853,290  divorces. 

Rev.  F.  M.  Moody  of  Chicago  on  June 
25,  1916,  while  urging  upon  president 
Wilson  the  necessity  for  controlling  mar- 
riage and  divorce  by  constitutional  amend- 
ment, informed  him  that  125,000  divorces 
had  been  granted  in  1916,  and  that  during 


Divorce  185 

the  past  sixteen  years  of  this  century  the 
United  States  led  the  world  by  granting 
1,400,000  divorces.  Since  1914  five  mil- 
lions of  American  women  have  run  their 
husbands  through  the  divorce  mill. 

Let  your  imagination  picture  the  sad, 
demoralizing  effect  of  this  social  condition 
upon  the  children  of  these  dissolved 
unions. 

Yet  the  Episcopal  Church  will  not 
change  its  canon  on  divorce.  There  is 
a  strong  movement  in  the  Church  by  con- 
sistent members,  ashamed  of  this  pagan 
practice  perpetuated  by  Protestantism,  to 
forbid  the  clergy  to  perform  a  marriage 
ceremony  for  a  divorced  person  with  a 
wife  or  husband  living.  When  the  propo- 
sition came  up  before  the  convention  at 
St.  Louis  recently,  it  was  voted  down.  The 
clerical  delegates  approved  it,  be  it  said 
to  their  credit,  but  the  lay  delegates  re- 
jected it  on  the  ground  that  it  "  would 
drive  Christian  men  and  women  out  of  the 
Church." 

How  can  a  man  or  woman,  who  believes 
in  divorce,  be  a  Christian,  or  a  follower  of 


186     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

Christ,  since  He  so  plainly  condemned  di- 
vorce and  alleged  it  to  be  adulterous  to 
marry  the  one  put  away? 

In  Canada  from  1867  to  1886,  inclusive, 
only  116  divorces  were  granted.  During 
the  same  period  of  twenty  years  there 
were  only  11  divorces  in  Ireland. 

Does  not  a  sort  of  progressive  Mormon- 
ism  result  from  the  divorce  law  1 

Millions  of  women  demanded  the  vote 
as  a  matter  of  justice. 

Millions  of  men  and  women  are  demand- 
ing the  abolition  of  alcohol  as  a  beverage 
because  of  its  disastrous  effect  upon  hu- 
manity and  the  untold  and  far-reaching 
misery  that  it  brings  to  mothers  and  help- 
less children.  Divorce  destroys  the  home, 
breaks  up  the  family,  instills  hatred  in  the 
children  for  one  parent  or  the  other,  and 
often  throws  them  into  the  cheerless  lap  of 
civic  charity  to  be  taunted  at  maturity 
with  having  been  an  almshouse  product, 
yet  how  many  dry  throats  can  be  found 
outside  of  a  single  Christian  denomina- 
tion who  consider  the  ill  effects  of  the  di- 
vorce, or  any  other  sexual  evil,  in  their 


Divorce  187 

relations  to  mothers  and  children  as  wor- 
thy of  the  notice  of  veiled  puritans  who 
hypocritically  caw  from  a  popular  perch 
in  a  cause  which  does  not  expose  or  re- 
strict their  secret  sins  or  threaten  their 
temporal  welfare ! 

Occasionally  a  cry  from  the  wilderness 
of  social  sin  is  heard.  N,ow  and  then  a 
John  the  Baptist  will  take  a  chance  on  his 
head  and  denounce  illegal  marriages  and 
the  adulteries  found  in  divorce  stews. 

In  a  news  item  there  is  suggested  par- 
tial remedy  based  on  the  remarks  of  a 
disgusted  and  courageous  Judge,  which 
reads  as  follows : 

TOLEDO,  Ohio,  November  4,  1917. — A 
law  that  will  provide  that  married  folk 
cannot  obtain  a  divorce  until  after  they 
have  had  five  years  of  married  life  to  their 
credit :  This  is  the  solution  of  the  divorce 
problem  offered  by  Common  Pleas  Judge 
Bernard  Brough. 

"It  has  reached  the  shameful  point 
where  there  is  one  divorce  out  of  every 
four  marriages,"  Judge  Brough  declares. 
"  Three  times  as  many  women  as  men  ap- 
ply for  divorce.  This  may  indicate  more 


188     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

men  than  women  are  responsible  for  dis- 
turbance in  the  household. 

"Some  marriages  are  really  no  more 
than  trials,"  says  the  Judge.  "Couples 
make  no  pretense  of  establishing  a  home 
and  living  as  sane  married  people  should. 
They  fight  the  first  week  and  in  a  month 
are  seeking  divorce.  Hasty  marriages 
bring  about  this  situation.  I  believe  the 
only  solution  to  the  divorce  question  is  a 
five-year  marriage." 

Under  date  of  April  1,  1920,  a  leading 
New  York  paper  published  the  following : 

Judge  Joseph  B.  David  to-day  quit  the 
divorce  branch  of  the  Supreme  Court  here 
and  asked  to  be  transferred  to  some  other 
Court.  On  being  interviewed  he  said, 
"Far  from  being  a  stigma  on  a  woman's 
name,  a  divorce  now  seems  to  be  regarded 
as  an  asset  by  her,  in  that  with  one  she 
can  attract  more  men.  Marriage  means 
but  little  in  this  day  and  age,  causing 
laughter  rather  than  solemn  regard. 

"Sitting  in  this  court  every  day,  I  have 
at  last  concluded  that  the  more  divorces 
a  woman  has,  the  more  men  she  can  at- 
tract. All  that  couples  have  to  do  at  pres- 
ent to  get  around  the  divorce  laws  is  to 


Divorce  189 

cross  a  few  state  lines.  I  believe  that 
many  women  seek  divorces  just  for  excite- 
ment. They  have  too  much  idle  time  on 
their  hands." 

The  wild  beast  of  divorce  that  roams 
the  fields  of  matrimony  and  feeds  on  hu- 
man passions  should  be  lashed  from  this 
Christian  country  with  a  scourge  of  scor- 
pions. 

The  divorce  law  has  been  gradually 
limbered  up  by  statutory  enactment  till 
now,  in  the  different  states,  about  twenty- 
five  grounds  for  absolute  divorce  exist. 
The  plea  of  cruelty  or  desertion  has 
wrecked  more  nuptial  couches  than  all  of 
the  other  statutory  causes. 

Recently  a  woman  in  quest  of  a  divorce 
on  the  ground  of  cruelty  charged  that  her 
husband  had  his  dog's  teeth  filled  with 
gold  and  hers  with  silver. 

In  another  case  a  woman  claimed  that 
after  her  marriage  her  husband  would 
say,  "Put  up  your  little  tootsie  wootsies 
and  get  them  warm,"  and  that  before  the 
year  ended  he  would  say,  "Take  away 
your  damned  old  hoofs." 


190     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

Another  woman  was  "cruelly  crushed 
and  her  heart  made  to  bleed"  by  her  hus- 
band's insisting  on  keeping  the  picture 
of  an  old  flame  on  the  dresser  in  their 
sleeping  room,  and  when  she  objected  to  it 
he  would  throw  kisses  at  it  and  say,  "I 
wish  I  had  married  that  rosebud  mouth 
instead  of  a  garage  entrance." 

Another  wife  alleged: 

We  were  married  scarcely  a  year  before 
I  began  rapidly  to  take  on  flesh  and  lose 
the  physical  lines  of  my  girlhood.  His 
whole  demeanor  toward  me  gradually 
changed.  I  took  him  to  task  in  a  kind  way 
for  his  coldness  and  neglect.  He  said — * '  I 
have  seen  better  shaped  animals  on  a  farm 
and  your  eyes  are  buried  in  pork."  He 
put  a  dead  mouse  in  my  stocking  and  when 
I  drew  it  on  I  thought  I  would  lose  my 
life  before  I  could  free  myself  from  the 
horrid  thing.  He  laughed  in  irony  during 
my  desperate  struggle  and  said,  "I  put 
it  there  to  scare  some  of  the  fat  off:." 
That  experience  haunted  me  for  weeks  and 
filled  my  nights  with  horror.  I  would  leap 
from  my  bed  in  a  cold  sweat  to  escape  the 
imaginary  pursuit  of  myriads  of  mice. 
We  always  retired  in  the  dark.  One 


Divorce  191 

morning  on  opening  my  eyes  I  beheld  a 
frightful  black  spider  swaying  about  two 
feet  above  my  head  suspended  from  the 
ceiling  by  a  white  thread.  I  ducked  under 
the  clothes  and  screamed  to  John  to  re- 
move it  before  I  smothered.  He  said, 
"Sweat  away;  it  will  reduce  your  flesh." 
I  went  into  a  nervous  decline  and  soon  be- 
came very  thin.  When  I  asked  him  why 
he  put  the  leather  table  cover  in  my  bed, 
he  said,  "To  prevent  your  bones  from 
splitting  the  sheets." 

The  defense  was  that  he  married  her 
for  her  beauty  when  she  was  poor ;  brought 
her  to  an  attractive  home ;  that  the  ymouse 
and  spider  episodes  were  intended  as 
practical  jokes;  that  constant  attendance 
at  the  movies  had  unseated  her  nerves  and 
brought  on  nightmare  and  nocturnal 
twitching ;  that  she  still  had  the  outlines  of 
a  Eehan ;  that  the  leather  table  cover  was 
used  because  of  a  physical  weakness,  and 
that,  as  her  husband,  he  wished  the  privi- 
lege of  paying  the  expense  of  her  burial. 
The  case  was  never  tried.  He  supported 
her  at  her  mother's  thereafter. 

Mrs.  Starstack  in  her  action  for  divorce, 


192     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

testified  that  her  husband,  after  six  try- 
ing months  of  rigid  matrimony,  destroyed 
her  dreams  of  love  and  turned  every  ante- 
nuptial pledge  into  a  lie  by  splitting  the 
air  with  a  heavy  silver  wedding  present 
aimed  at  her  head ;  testing  the  timber  of  a 
chair  upon  her  frail  anatomy;  viciously 
lacerating  her  wedding  waist;  heaving  a 
powder  box  against  her  abdominal  wall; 
slopping  her  face  with  hot  soup  and  deny- 
ing her  movie  and  bridge  money  because 
of  the  high  cost  of  living. 

Gladys  Patience,  the  mother  of  an  adult 
son  and  daughter,  sought  to  have  her  mat- 
rimonial fetters  judicially  melted  because 
of  her  husband's  refusal  to  communicate 
with  her  except  through  postcards,  some 
of  which  read : 

Any  old  barn  that's  painted,  looks  good, 
and  that's  you. 

Life  is  just  a  slaughter  house  and  we 
furnish  the  bull. 

I  am  a  happy  man.  Why?  Because 
I  'm  alone. 


Divorce  193 

If  you  want  to  be  pecked  clean,  marry 
an  old  hen. 

A  painted,  artificial,  hand-made,  stringy 
female,  the  result  of  nature,  nonsense,  or 
desire,  will  breed  he  matrimonial  chil- 
blains. 

Cicero  divorced  his  wife  Terentia  that 
he  might  marry  an  heiress  whom  he  later 
repudiated  because  she  failed  to  weep  at 
her  stepdaughter's  funeral. 

Cato  sundered  his  ties  with  Attilia  after 
the  birth  of  two  children,  and  loaned  his 
second  wife  to  his  friend,  Hortensius, 
upon  whose  death  he  remarried  her. 

The  Emperor  Augustus  drove  Livia's 
husband  away  and  made  her  his  wife. 

Sempronius  Sophus  divorced  his  wife 
because  she  went  once  to  the  public  games 
without  his  consent. 

The  mother  of  Scipio  without  cause  was 
thrown  out  by  her  husband  Paulus  ^Emil- 
ius;  and  the  heartless  Sylla  repudiated 
his  wife  while  ill  and  sent  her  to  a  neigh- 
bor. 

Catherine  and  Josephine,  devoted  and 


194     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

beautiful  wives,  were  divorced  by  their 
respective  husbands  Henry  VIII  and 
Napoleon,  because  of  their  alleged  steril- 
ity; and  Charlemagne  sent  his  wife  back 
to  her  father  Desiderius  because  she  bore 
him  no  children. 

Yet  Cato,  Cicero,  and  Augustus  were 
moral  censors,  philosophers,  and  states- 
men, while  Henry  VIII  wrote  a  book  in 
defense  of  the  Catholic  faith ;  and  Charle- 
magne was  the  greatest  church-builder 
that  ever  mussed  plush  on  a  throne. 

The  French  King  Philip  married  the 
daughter  of  the  King  of  Denmark,  and 
after  a  single  night  sent  her  to  her  father 
with  an  unpublished  letter  of  explanation. 

Louis  XI  of  France  returned  his  wife 
Margaret  to  her  home,  explaining  that  her 
stagnant  breath  roiled  his  stomach. 

Women  seeking  a  divorce  for  every  do- 
mestic ill  should  know  of  the  experience 
of  an  Afghan  lady  who  sought  to  discard 
her  husband  for  baldness.  She  applied  to 
the  Ameer  of  Afghanistan,  who,  recog- 
nizing the  importance  of  domestic  as  well 
as  governmental  unity  and  authority,  de- 


Divorce  195 

cided,  after  due  reflection  upon  the  demor- 
alizing tendency  of  feminine  disrespect 
for  intellectual  men  with  barren  domes, 
that  an  example  should  be  made  of  the 
complainant.  He  accordingly  ordered  a 
vial  of  sour  milk  poured  upon  the  hus- 
band's head  and  forced  the  wife  to  lick  it 
off  with  her  tongue.  She  was  then  placed 
upon  a  donkey's  back  facing  his  tail  and 
ordered  to  ride  through  the  bazaar.  Do- 
mestic tranquillity  has  reigned  since  in 
the  dominions  of  the  Ameer. 

Of  ninety-four  representative  women, 
during  1910,  conversant  with  affairs,  and 
members  of  the  Women's  Co-operative 
Guild,  of  London,  to  the  question  whether 
or  not  they  were  in  favor  of  divorce  by 
mutual  consent,  eighty-two  deliberately 
answered  in  the  affirmative. 

These  thoughtless  and  perhaps  moral 
women  may  have  been  quite  unaware  that 
they  were  advocating  a  licensed  commerce 
with  the  other  sex. 

American  social  conditions  are  fairly  in- 
dicated in  the  following  news  item — 


196     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

NEW  YOKE,  October  24,  1918.— Frank 
J.  Gould,  youngest  son  of  the  late  Jay 
Gould,  has  started  divorce  proceedings 
against  his  second  wife,  Miss  Edith  Kelly, 
according  to  reports  received  here  from 
Paris  by  his  friends.  Incompatibility  of 
temper  is  understood  to  be  the  ground  for 
the  action. 

At  the  time  of  her  marriage  to  Frank 
Gould,  Miss  Kelly  was  a  well-known  ac- 
tress and  had  appeared  in  leading  parts 
in  Havana  and  in  The  Girls  of  Gotten- 
~burg. 

The  marriage  took  place  in  1910,  a  year 
after  Gould  was  divorced  from  his  first 
wife,  Miss  Helen  Margaret  Kelly. 

Mrs.  Helen  Kelly  Gould  later  married 
Ralph  T.  Thomas  of  New  York  who  died, 
and  then  married  Prince  Noureddin 
Vlora,  an  Albanian  nobleman. 

Another  phase  of  social  activity  among 
the  wealthy,  is  described  in  the  New  York 
Tribune  of  October  27,  1918.  A  new  use 
of  the  kiss  as  an  instrument  for  sustained 
thrills  has  been  disclosed. 

The  plaintiff  in  a  divorce  action  charges 
that  her  husband,  a  wealthy  manufacturer, 
in  company  with  the  wife  of  a  dentist,  en- 


Divorce  197 

tered  an  auto  at  Gedney  Farms  Hotel, 
destined  for  Bed  Brook,  miles  away ;  that 
as  soon  as  their  anatomy  struck  the  seat 
the  pair  entwined  and  in  a  sensually  be- 
wildered delirium,  he  siphoned  the  lava 
from  the  responsive,  torpid  lips  of  his 
companion,  though  dedicated  to  the  ser- 
vice of  another.  It  is  further  charged 
that  this  osculatory  facial  grazing  feat 
was  developed  in  silence,  and  in  the  pres- 
ence of  others,  and  prolonged  to  the  jour- 
ney's end  without  breaking  holds. 

The  noted  Olga  Nethersole  kiss,  as 
Sappho,  which  she  bestowed  on  her  favor- 
ite, in  comparison  with  this  lip-locked 
pair,  would  be,  in  heat,  as  a  lambent  flame 
to  a  fire-tossed  forest. 

Matrimonial  dyspepsia,  treated  in  di- 
vorce courts,  is  a  menacing  ill  that  yields 
to  no  moral  serum. 

Divorce  is  a  social  microbe  that  has  in- 
fested marital  relations  since  Abraham 
tickled  the  chin  of  Hagar,  and  which  con- 
tinues to  roam  and  fatten  in  the  anatomy 
of  man  in  defiance  of  popes,  pulpits,  pen- 


198     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

alties,  and  a  threatened  inferno,  sulphuric 
and  flame-lapped. 

Some  one  wrote  that  "the  chain  will 
gall  tho'  wreathed  with  roses."  When 
the  leaves  of  the  rose  of  matrimony  are 
no  longer  be  jeweled  by  the  gentle  dews  of 
love,  soon  flaws  appear  where  formerly 
perfection  reigned,  and  nectar-sweating 
lips,  the  price  of  bartered  realms,  pout  de- 
fiance at  the  approach  of  a  crumbling  idol, 
while  divinity  in  form  no  longer  moves  a 
lash  of  the  Apollo  of  a  blighted  love. 

Mites  are  magnified,  remarks  willfully 
distorted,  explanations  fall  upon  unwill- 
ing ears,  guilt  grows  defiant,  and  finally 
the  statutory  key  to  the  connubial  lock 
drops  into  the  lap  of  matrimony. 

Divorce  is  now  crowding  the  banks  of 
the  Protestant  social  stream  throughout 
the  world,  and  elbowing  for  room  in  the 
civil  courts. 

Recently,  the  following  appeared  in  the 
public  press, — 

LONDON,  January  28,  1920. — The  post- 
war divorce  crush  is  steadily  increasing 
and  it  was  declared  to-day  that  no  diminu- 


Divorce  199 

tion  is  in  sight.  There  were  1325  unde- 
fended cases  in  the  January  list  of  di- 
vorce court,  and  a  new  list  is  being  pre- 
pared to  take  care  of  the  surplus  cases. 
The  big  increase  in  divorces  is  attributed 
to  the  upheaval  in  social  conditions  caused 
by  the  war. 

At  the  November,  1920,  special  term  of 
the  Supreme  Court,  held  at  Utica,  New 
York,  of  the  seventy  cases  on  the  calendar 
twenty-five  were  divorce  actions. 

A  number  of  he-sexual-prowlers  found 
themselves  sitting  on  hot  sand,  when,  in 
November,  1920,  at  the  close  of  a  revival 
in  the  City  of  Washington,  Rev.  B.  F.  Mc- 
Lendon,  a  noted  evangelist,  leaned  over 
the  pulpit  and  said,  "  There  is  a  certain 
man  here  who  has  not  been  true  to  his 
family  or  his  religion.  He  is  in  the  con- 
gregation to-night.  If  he  will  deposit  a 
ten-dollar  bill  in  the  collection  plate  it  will 
be  taken  as  a  token  of  his  repentance  and 
nothing  further  will  be  said.  If  he  fails, 
I  will  announce  his  name." 

The  collection  included  eighty-five  ten- 
dollar  bills  and  five  notes  asking  the  evan- 


200     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

gelist  to  keep  quiet,  and  promising  the  ten 
dollars  in  the  morning. 

Divorce  and  remarriage  is  nothing  short 
of  rotary  polygamy  so  strikingly  exempli- 
fied in  the  lives  of  many  luscious  social 
pushers,  eye-sought  entertainers,  and 
bare-skin  idolaters,  whose  chirping  ama- 
tiveness  frequently  calls  for  a  change  in 
male  sedatives. 

We  are  rapidly  approaching  the  condi- 
tions in  pagan  Rome  when,  matrimonially, 
men  and  women  were  bound  by  ropes  of 
sand.  Martial  speaks  of  a  woman  who  had 
hooked  her  tenth  husband.  Juvenal  re- 
fers to  one  who  had  introduced  her  nup- 
tial couch  to  eight  different  husbands  in 
five  years.  St.  Jerome  says  there  lived  in 
Rome  a  wife  who  had  married  her  twenty- 
third  husband,  she  being  his  twenty-first 
wife.  Seneca,  in  despair,  exclaimed: 
"  There  is  not  a  woman  left,  who  is 
ashamed  of  being  divorced,  now  that  the 
most  distinguished  ladies  count  their  years 
not  by  the  consuls,  but  by  their  husbands. ' ' 

Hence  woman — the  Lord's  answer  to 
Adam's  wish  and  the  primeval  channel  of 


Divorce  201 

sorrow  and  sin,  and  at  the  same  time  the 
sweetest  flower  in  the  garden  of  the  world 
— must  gird  herself  with  the  armor  of 
chastity ;  heel  the  heads  of  the  serpents  of 
her  environment;  wax  her  ears  against 
the  constant  calls  to  evil  around  her ;  use 
every  art,  muscle,  and  available  grace  to 
bar  the  lecher  from  the  temple  of  virtue, 
and  by  will  power  so  calm  the  surging 
waves  of  illicit  desire  that  every  word  and 
act  will  reflect  the  moral  cleanliness  of  her 
soul ;  then  and  not  till  then  will  the  hand 
of  the  sensual  leech  be  stayed;  then  and 
not  till  then  will  husband  and  wife  really 
be  two  in  one  flesh ;  then  and  not  till  then 
will  mankind  cease  to  rain  miscellaneous 
mamzers  upon  the  world. 


CHAPTER  XV 

SEQUENCE 

THE  votaries  of  sensual  pleasures  with 
definite  action  against  progeny  to  check 
"the  vulgar  aim  of  reckless  racial  fertil- 
ity," as  advocated  by  the  Ellis  propagan- 
dists, certainly  will  succeed  in  eliminating 
their  kind  from  the  human  family  and  in 
multiplying  beyond  their  control  that  very 
element  which  they  seek  to  check. 

The  Birth  Control  League  may  success- 
fully work  the  easy  soil  of  wealth  and 
make  some  progress  with  the  so-called 
middle  classes,  but  when  they  strike  the 
hardpan  of  the  orthodox  Jew,  Mormon, 
Mohammedan,  Roman  Catholic,  socialistic 
German,  and  willfully  prolific  Japanese, 
their  crop  hardly  will  be  worth  the  har- 
vesting. 

In  point  are  the  remarks  of  Mrs.  Lulu 

Loveland  Sheppard,  of  the  National  Re- 
202 


Sequence  203 

form  Association,  who  on  December  21, 
1916,  said: 

Mormonism  has  grown  more  rapidly  in 
the  last  fifty  years  than  any  other  church, 
and  to-day  one  person  in  every  sixty  is  a 
Mormon,  and  it  holds  the  balance  of 
power,  politically,  in  eleven  states.  If  it 
gets  control  of  two  more  western  states  it 
can  hold  the  balance  of  power  in  Congress. 

Under  date  of  October  20,  1920,  the 
Japanese  Exclusion  League  of  California, 
in  its  report  states : 

The  Japanese  birth  rate  in  California  is 
three  times  that  of  the  whites,  although 
the  proportion  of  adult  females  among  the 
Japanese  is  less  than  one-third  that  among 
the  whites. 

Those  who  look  upon  the  Mormons  and 
Japanese  as  a  social  menace  because  of 
their  breeding  propensities  should  realize 
that  the  only  way  to  prevent  their  over- 
running the  United  States  is  to  out-pro- 
geny them. 

Puritanic  New  England,  with  her  cloud- 
capped  granite  hills,  once  bore  upon  her 


204     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

nourishing  bosom  a  narrow-minded  but 
God-fearing  people  who  raised  large  fami- 
lies and  frowned  on  frivolities  till  their 
offspring  commercially  and  politically 
dominated  that  vast  territory. 

The  law  of  the  easiest  way,  stimulated 
by  a  spreading  prosperity,  finally  wormed 
into  the  very  foundation  of  a  once  uncom- 
promising faith. 

Here  and  there  the  eggs  of  divorce 
found  nests  in  the  laps  of  affluent  idleness 
and  hatching  warmth  in  the  sunshine  of 
luxury  and  lust. 

The  countenances  of  men  and  women 
made  rigid  by  pious  thoughts  and  elon- 
gated prayers  ultimately  beamed  upon  the 
shattered  moral  shackles  at  their  feet. 
Water  and  soap,  the  early  symbols  of  so- 
briety and  cleanliness,  finally  abdicated  in 
favor  of  sugared  rum  and  pious  inconti- 
nence. That  society  might  be  served  and 
its  pleasures  fully  absorbed,  the  wearying 
burdens  of  maternity,  one  by  one,  were 
laid  on  the  altar  of  a  suppurating  faith, 
till  now  the  New  England  " Yankee"  is 
being  gradually  swept  into  the  sea  of 


Sequence  205 

oblivion  upon  the  submerging  tide  of 
moral  laxity. 

It  has  been  the  history  of  the  world 
that  the  Goddess  of  Virtue  is  less  lonely 
in  the  shrines  of  poverty  than  in  the 
gilded  temples  of  wealth. 

The  moral  sloughing  and  progeny- 
shrinking  of  Protestant  New  England  un- 
fortunately is  due  to  a  withered  faith,  a 
rapidly  encompassing  rationalism,  doubt 
as  to  mail's  accountability  to  God  and  the 
expurgation  of  the  noxious  doctrine  of  a 
sulphuric  hell  from  the  Plymouth  Rock 
creed. 

Catholicism,  for  nearly  two  thousand 
years,  has  unswervingly  taught  the  doc- 
trine of  rewards  and  punishments,  and 
consistently  condemned  divorce,  abortion, 
and  sexual  deceits. 

The  sinner  on  his  knees  is  pledged  to  a 
new  life  in  the  confessional,  the  most  pow- 
erful arm  of  the  Church. 

While  among  her  children  and  within 
her  fold  are  many  secret  rebels  who  re- 
fuse to  tread  the  paths  of  spiritual  peace, 
and  sin  for  sin,  can,  and  do,  match  the 


206     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

votaries  of  any  other  creed ;  still  the  per- 
centage of  her  obedient  ones  is  so  great 
that  she  is  rapidly  acquiring  a  numerical 
ascendancy  over  the  combined  Protest- 
antism of  the  United  States. 

The  religious  census  of  the  United 
States  taken  in  1906,  for  sixteen  years 
back,  showed  an  increase  of  93.5  per  cent 
in  the  Roman  Catholic  churches;  and  an 
increase  in  all  Protestant  bodies  of  44.8 
per  cent  for  the  same  period. 

A  non-Catholic  minister,  Rev.  W.  E. 
Evans,  in  the  Accrington  Observer,  made 
this  pronouncement: 

Unless  a  miracle  happens,  according  to 
the  law  of  population  England  and  the 
whole  Christianized  world  will  some  time 
in  the  future — sooner  than  some  of  us 
think — be  overwhelmingly  Roman  Catho- 
lic. 

In  the  first  place,  religion  has  had 
throughout  the  ages  a  very  remarkable  ef- 
fect upon  the  birth  rate.  While  Prot- 
estant England,  Calvinistic  Wales,  and 
Presbyterian  Scotland  bewailed  the  fact 
of  the  decreasing  birth  rate,  Ireland  re- 
joiced in  an  increased  birth — three  per 


Sequence  207 

1000.  Roman  Catholicism  is  like  the  Jew- 
ish religion  in  that  it  places  great  value 
upon  child  life. 

A  committee  of  the  association  of  Irish 
Nonsubscribing  Presbyterians  and  other 
Free  Christians  recently  prepared  a  state- 
ment for  circulation  amongst  the  clergy 
on  the  subject  of  social  morality,  which 
reads  as  follows : 

In  Great  Britain,  and  especially  in  Ire- 
land, Roman  Catholicism  has  an  immense 
advantage  over  Protestantism.  In  Ire- 
land venereal  disease  may  be  said  to  be  a 
Protestant  disease.  .  .  .  Among  Euro- 
pean cities  we  find  Dublin  at  the  top  of  the 
moral  ideals  and  Paris  at  the  bottom. 
London  as  a  whole  is  bad;  but  Bethnal 
Green,  which  contains  a  large  proportion 
of  Catholics,  is  good.  Social  conditions 
and  poverty  afford  no  explanation  of  the 
bad  state  of  things.  In  Catholic  countries 
the  decay  in  morality,  as  shown  by  race- 
suicide,  coincides  with  diminution  of  the 
influence  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church. 
The  state  of  things  in  Canada  is  particu- 
larly instructive.  There  we  have  a  Catho- 
lic and  Protestant  population,  both 
equally  prosperous,  living  under  exactly 


208     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

the  same  conditions  in  every  way  except 
in  regard  to  religion.  The  French  Cana- 
dian is  a  moral  man  as  far  as  race-suicide 
goes,  while  his  Protestant  neighbor  is  ap- 
proaching the  moral  abyss  of  the  Yankee. 
In  respect  to  race-suicide  Ireland,  Aus- 
tria, and  French  Canada  are  the  brightest 
spots. 

Protestant  sexual  frosts,  the  world  over, 
are  blighting  their  progeny  fields  and, 
whether  they  will  it  or  not,  their  necks  will 
ultimately  bear  the  yoke  of  Rome. 

While  Rome  would  welcome  evidence 
of  increasing  influence  and  moral  power, 
we  feel  sure  that  she  would  greatly  regret 
the  gradual  but  final  disappearance  from 
the  human  family  of  a  class  who  have  done 
so  much  in  the  past  for  the  moral  and 
national  advancement  of  humanity,  by 
willful  recourse  to  connubial  deceits, 
which,  eventually,  must  necessarily  great- 
ly reduce  them  numerically  and  finally 
eliminate  them  as  a  potent  factor  in  the 
affairs  of  the  world. 

Family  after  family  are  becoming  ex- 
tinct, and  their  estates  are  passing  to  col- 


Sequence  209 

laterals  or  to  charities.  The  Russell  Sage 
estate  is  a  noted  instance.  The  list  might 
be  carried  to  the  point  of  tediousness. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  curse  of  the  race, 
and  the  one  that  constantly  cries  to  heaven 
for  vengeance,  is  the  refusal  of  those  who 
are  comfortable  and  intellectual  fully  to 
yield  to  the  untrammeled  laws  of  progeny. 

Let  some  of  the  leagued  assassins  of  the 
human  race  traverse  the  streets  of  social 
centers  and  note  the  pervading  chilly  still- 
ness, then  enter  the  homes  of  the  care- 
takers of  wealth  and  of  the  spindle  and 
wheel-turners  of  the  world,  and  there,  in 
the  midst  of  rollicking  children,  contem- 
plate the  time  that  it  will  take  them  to 
eliminate  socially  and  politically  the  hand- 
picked  from  the  highways  of  life, — as  has 
the  Socialist  in  Russia,  Germany,  and  in 
other  parts  of  Europe,  by  crumbling 
thrones  and  driving  crown-wearers  into 
exile. 

In  the  early  development  of  the  State 
of  New  York  a  rope  necktie,  sanctioned 
by  law,  was  given  to  any  priest  who  ven- 
tured within  its  boundaries,  and  active 


210     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

hostility  against  Catholicism  very  gener- 
ally pervaded  the  colonists. 

By  obeying  the  teachings  of  their 
Church  the  Catholics  rapidly  increased, 
while  their  Protestant  backsliders  gradu- 
ally drifted  from  their  rigid  moral  stand- 
ards until  the  old  custom  of  large  fami- 
lies amongst  them  was  honored  only  in 
its  breach. 

A  Catholic  Mayor  of  Boston,  a  Catholic 
United  States  Senator  from  Massachu- 
setts, a  Catholic  Governor  of  that  state,  a 
Catholic  Mayor  of  Greater  New  York,  a 
Catholic  Governor  of  the  Empire  State, 
a  Catholic  Chief  Justice  of  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States  and  Catholic 
Foch  Generalissimo  of  the  Allied  armies, 
must  make  Cotton  Mather  fume  and  spit 
as  he  paces  the  floor  of  eternity. 

Colonial  whiskers  and  wisdom  have  long 
since  been  divorced — they  no  longer  dom- 
inate the  councils  of  the  East. 

The  heat  of  prosperity  gradually  melted 
the  ice  of  Puritanism,  till  now  shackle- 
free,  it  has  become  a  social-dress  and  pray 
affair  for  the  women ;  while  the  men  chant 


Sequence  211 

that  love  is  potent,  but  money  is  omnipo- 
tent, and  that  Hell  even  can  be  locked  with 
a  golden  key. 

A  new  social  era  is  rapidly  enveloping 
the  earth.  The  international  war  just 
closed  has  uncovered  to  the  proletariat  his 
vast  powers  which  are  being  used  with  the 
zeal  of  youth  to  wipe  out  the  long  endured 
and  slavishly  burdensome  political  and 
military  autocracies  of  Europe,  and  to 
force  a  more  just  distribution  of  wealth  in 
this  country. 

Upwards  of  thirteen  millions  of  for- 
eign-born are  now  living  in  the  United 
States,  who  do  eighty-five  per  cent  of  the 
work  in  the  slaughtering  and  meat-pack- 
ing industries;  mine  seven- tenths  of  the 
coal ;  do  seven-eighths  of  the  work  in  the 
woolen  mills ;  manufacture  more  than  half 
the  shoes ;  construct  four-fifths  of  the  fur- 
niture ;  make  half  the  collars,  cuffs,  and 
shirts ;  turn  out  four-fifths  of  the  leather ; 
manufacture  half  of  the  tobacco,  cigars, 
and  gloves,  and  refine  nearly  nineteen- 
twentieths  of  the  sugar.  Add  to  these  the 
millions  of  citizens  who  live  by  their  labor, 


212     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

then  tell  this  vast  army  to  check  propaga- 
tion as  their  vulgar  offspring  is  no  longer 
desired  and  that  they  are  a  social  menace, 
and  that  the  Birth  Control  League  and 
their  disciples  have  decided  that  the  fu- 
ture citizen  must  come  from  selected  par- 
entage— then  I  warn  the  preventers  and 
assassins  of  the  innocent  to  flee  from  the 
wrath  to  come  and  seek  their  dugouts,  as 
the  cyclonic  rage  arising  from  the  inva- 
sion of  human  rights  will  sweep  the  devil's 
league,  talented  vipers,  she- vampires,  pur- 
veyors of  sperm  traps  and  embryo  las- 
soes from  the  face  of  the  earth,  and  with 
less  formality  than  that  which  hurled  the 
Czar  from  his  throne  and  sent  his  wailing 
soul  into  No  Man's  Land. 

It  must  be  apparent  to  one  of  thought 
that  this  limitation  doctrine  must  ulti- 
mately die  from  the  weight  of  its  own 
waste. 

Wedding  bells,  a  happy  couple,  one 
child,  social  ambition,  maternity  revolt, 
five  abortions.,  twelve  years  of  crushing 
misery,  a  neat  grave  in  Forest  Hill  Ceme- 
tery, a  second  wife,  two  children  and  a 


Sequence  213 

happy  home  is  the  condensed  history  of  a 
family  well  known  to  the  writer. 

Let  the  nefarious  Ellis  creed  of  a  lim- 
ited offspring  spread,  with  an  occasional 
child  from  the  physical  and  intellectual 
perfectos,  whose  breeding  machinery  has 
become  tangled  by  frequent  conflict  with 
natural  laws,  and  there  will  be  spewed 
upon  the  world  a  brood  of  weaklings  ut- 
terly unable  to  contend  with  the  myriads 
of  gladiators  who  are  constantly  spring- 
ing from  the  lap  of  poverty  into  all  of  the 
avenues  of  human  activity. 

The  stars  in  law,  medicine,  theology, 
science,  business,  politics,  and  in  the  cal- 
endar of  the  saints,  in  childhood,  practi- 
cally all  grazed  on  the  sand  lots  of  poverty. 

That  which  is  true  of  pugilism  is  borne 
out  by  investigation  of  the  various  callings 
of  man. 

Jess  Willard,  Luther  McCarty,  Stanley 
Ketchell  were  cowboys ;  Dan  Creedon,  Jim 
Hall,  Fred  Fulton,  plasterers ;  Peter  Jack- 
son and  Jack  Johnson,  stevedores;  Jim 
Flynn  and  Carl  Morris,  firemen;  Jack 
Boot  and  John  Coulon,  piano-movers; 


214     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

Marvin  Hart,  plumber ;  Bill  Lang,  miner ; 
Jack  O'Brien,  teamster;  Tommy  Burns, 
hockey-player;  Billy  Murphy,  tailor; 
Jack  Dempsey,  cooper;  Bill  Squires, 
wood-chopper ;  Peter  Maher,  brewer ;  Joe 
Choynski,  candy-maker;  Jim  Corbett, 
bank  clerk;  Bob  Fitzsimmons,  black- 
smith ;  Jim  Jeffries,  boilermaker,  and  the 
greatest  Roman  of  them  all,  John  L.  Sul- 
livan was  a  tinner's  apprentice. 

The  noted  sons  of  poverty,  standing 
side  by  side,  would  encircle  the  globe. 

A.  E.  Waterson,  who  in  boyhood 
begged  his  bread  from  door  to  door,  is 
now  a  member  of  the  House  of  Commons. 

Julius  Rosenwald  advanced  from  a 
"chromo"  salesman  to  a  partnership  in 
the  noted  firm  of  Sears,  Roebuck  &  Com- 
pany, and  has  given  millions  to  charity. 

Glen  Curtiss,  the  errand  boy,  is  now  a 
millionaire  bird-man. 

In  the  criminal  and  reckless  war  on  em- 
bryos that  has  been  waged  for  centuries 
how  many  dormant  buds  of  genius  in 
every  line  have  been  cast  into  the  sewers 
of  sin ! 


Sequence  215 

While  in  our  nation  the  divorce  viper 
spits  his  virus  on  budding  childhood  from 
the  lap  of  countenancing  law,  the  recently 
conquered  Hun  is  planning  to  retrieve  nu- 
merical losses  by  government  supervision 
over  prospective  progeny. 

A  triune  scheme  provides  for  maternity 
grants,  increased  work  in  welfare  centers 
for  women  and  children,  and  special  pro- 
vision of  suitable  food  for  expectant  or 
nursing  mothers  and  for  growing  children. 

Let  our  own  national  and  state  govern- 
ments make  haste  to  war  perpetually  upon 
every  enemy  of  offspring,  whether  in  the 
form  of  doctors,  diseases,  deceits,  devices, 
devils  or  disciples  of  Sappho,  remember- 
ing that  no  nation,  yet,  has  long  endured 
under  the  spell  of  sexual  wile-weaving. 

The  weasel-souled  women,  who  dole 
canned  technique  for  fencing  the  ovarian 
fields  against  virility,  peddle  scandal  itch 
and  seminal  germicides  on  the  humani- 
tarian theory  that  God,  at  last,  has  heard 
the  cries  of  the  poor  mother  in  travail, 
should  be  cantoned  by  the  government 
and  condemned  as  Herodian  descendants, 


216     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

uterus  burglars  and  vampires  of  the  in- 
nocent. 

The  towering  intellects  that  have 
swayed  and  dazzled  the  world,  have  usu- 
ally sneaked  into  life  unheralded  except 
by  a  neighbor  or  a  midwife. 

A  single  congested  connubial  act  might 
rob  the  nation  of  a  savior. 

The  parable  of  the  Samaritan  has  lost 
its  pinchers,  it  no  longer  grips  nor  guides 
limber  Christianity  contentedly  lying  in 
the  gold-kissed  lap  of  the  growing  ma- 
terialism of  the  present  day. 

In  a  press  report  of  a  gathering  of  noted 
Methodists  on  December  10,  1918,  the 
headline  read : 

Methodism  Faces  Future  in  Doubtful 
Manner  Unless  Some  Movement 
Changes  Present  Trend,  Says  Cler- 
gyman. 

Dr.  Burns  of  Philadelphia  said : 

In  a  period  of  heart-searching  and  in- 
vestigation we  discover  the  weak  places 
in  the  church  life.  Unless  some  centenary 
or  similar  movement  changes  the  trend 
of  churches  very  soon  we  won't  have 


Sequence         217 

churches  in  American  cities.    I  think  the 
day  of  theology  is  gone. 

Yet  Christ  said : 

And  it  is  easier  for  Heaven  and  earth 
to  pass,  than  one  tittle  of  the  law  to  fail. 

That  Protestantism  is  gradually  de- 
parting from  the  hearts  of  men,  and  as 
the  Methodists  claim,  "the  day  of  theology 
is  gone,"  is  startlingly  shown  in  an  ar- 
ticle in  the  Cosmopolitan  of  March>  1919, 
by  Ben  B.  Lindsey,  in  which  he  gives  his 
experiences  with  the  soldiers  on  the  west- 
ern front  in  France,  and  from  which  I 
quote  the  following: 

The  Salvation  Army  had  no  money  to 
spend  on  motor  cars  and  gasoline  and  com- 
fortable billets  for  its  workers ;  and  those 
workers  were  not  of  the  social  class  that 
has  afternoon  tea  at  conspicuous  hotels 
and  inevitably  gets  its  pictures  in  the 
newspapers.  They  practiced  the  dough- 
boy's religion,  and  the  boys  loved  them. 

I  had  heard  that  the  war  had  brought 
a  great  religious  revival  among  the  war- 
ring people  of  Europe,  and  I  had  ex- 
pected to  see  signs  of  it  among  the  soldiers. 


218     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

There  were  none  of  the  traditional  sort. 
I  asked  the  officers  of  most  of  the  Allied 
forces  in  France,  and  they  replied  that 
there  was  no  religious  revival.  "Go  to 
the  churches,"  they  said,  "and  see."  So 
I  went  to  church  after  church  and  found 
them  empty.  I  attended  a  service  at  West- 
minster Abbey,  and  saw  a  few  conven- 
tional church  attendants  scattered 
throughout  the  chill  gloom  and  echoing 
emptiness  of  that  great  tomb  of  England's 
dead.  And  when  the  clergyman  mounted 
the  pulpit,  it  was  to  bemoan  the  fact,  as 
he  said,  that  "the  Church  seems  no  longer 
able  to  lead,"  that  it  had  "lost  its  influ- 
ence with  the  toilers  of  the  world,"  and 
that  the  loss  was  "mostly  the  fault  of  the 
Church." 

Among  the  soldiers  the  two  cardinal 
virtues  were  courage  and  self-sacrifice, 
and  the  two  greatest  sins  were  cowardice 
and  selfishness. 

The  creed  of  the  soldier  was  thus  ex- 
pressed by  one  of  them: 

Look  at  that  bunch  of  roughnecks  there ! 
Not  a  one  of  them  has  seen  the  inside  of  a 
church  in  years,  but  I  tell  you  they're  real 
Christians.  They  love  one  another,  and 


Sequence  219 

it's  the  real  thing  in  loving,  for  they'd 
lay  down  their  lives  for  each  other  and 
divide  their  last  crumb  with  a  comrade. 

The  following  from  Judge  Lindsey's 
Cosmopolitan  article  further  illustrates 
the  impression  made  upon  the  soldiers  by 
preachers  who  could  not  comprehend 
them — as  did  the  Savior  the  fishermen, 
with  whom  he  ate  on  the  shores  of  the  Sea 
of  Galilee : 

" We've  had  six  Y.  M.  C.  A.  preachers 
here  in  the  last  two  weeks,"  one  of  the 
men  said  to  me.  " They've  been  joy-rid- 
ing up  and  down  the  lines,  preaching  to  us 
about  the  dangers  of  booze,  women,  and 
gambling.  And  it's  the  holy  truth,  Judge, 
we're  so  sore  that  every  one  of  us  is  feel- 
ing like  having  a  hell  of  a  time  with  all 
three  the  first  leave  we  get."  I  heard  an- 
other soldier  announce  the  arrival  of  a  Y 
preacher  by  singing  out,  "Well,  well; 
here  comes  Old  Wine,  Women,  and  Song 
again!"  Over  and  over,  the  boys  would 
say,  "That  sissjfied  son  of  a  gun  is  using 
up  gasoline  over  here,  to  warn  us  fellows 
against  the  skirts,  when  he  ought  to  be 
down  in  the  trenches  where  he  belongs  or 


220     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

get  to  blazes  out  o'  here."  Or :  " What  is 
that  dolled-up  guy  doing  behind  a  counter, 
selling  cigarettes  and  living  in  the  best 
billet  in  town,  when  he  ought  to  be  soaking 
with  the  rest  of  us ?  He's  a  fake.  That's 
what  he  is — a  fake!" 

April  10, 1919.— The  Navy's  thanks  for 
the  welfare  work  during  the  war  were  con- 
veyed to  the  Knights  of  Columbus  head- 
quarters to-day  by  Acting  Secretary 
Roosevelt. 

"The  department,"  Mr.  Roosevelt 
wrote,  "desires  to  extend  the  gratitude  of 
the  officers  and  men  of  the  United  States 
Navy  for  all  the  many  good  things  the 
Knights  of  Columbus  have  done  for  them 
during  the  war.  The  efficiency  of  your  or- 
ganization has  been  well  matched  by  the 
constant  desire  of  the  individual  worker 
to  serve  the  men  to  the  best  of  his  ability. 

"Its  helpfulness  and  efficiency  has 
proven  a  powerful  aid  to  contentment  and 
fighting  spirit  in  the  Navy. 

"The  department  is  desirous  that  your 
excellent  work  be  continued  and  that  the 
naval  service  whether  the  country  is  in 
peace  or  at  war,  have  the  benefit  of  your 
splendid  cooperation.  There  is  a  very 
constant  need  for  your  services." 


Sequence  221 

Additional  proof  that  "the  day  of  the- 
ology is  gone"  is  found  in  the  morality 
shown  in  the  following  news  item : 

Bank  Wrecker  Is  Feted 

NASHVILLE,  Tennessee,  January  9, 1916. 
— William  J.  Cummins,  released  from 
prison  recently  by  pardon  of  Governor 
Whitman  after  having  served  three  years 
for  his  part  in  the  wrecking  of  the  Car- 
negie Trust  Company  of  New  York,  was 
the  honor  guest  here  last  night  at  a  dinner 
attended  by  several  hundred  persons,  in- 
cluding state  and  city  officials,  members  of 
the  Legislature  and  delegates  from  other 
cities.  A  rising  vote  of  thanks  was  given 
Governor  Whitman  for  the  pardon. 

The  truth  is  that  embroidered,  silk-clad 
and  diamond-decked  female  wealth,  as  a 
general  rule,  has  but  little  use  for  the 
poor,  except  to  use  them  as  a  means  of 
exploiting  a  pretended,  insincere,  worldly 
charity,  and  for  jaw  exercise  at  their  clubs, 
and  an  occasional  headline  in  the  society 
columns. 

The  socially  wearied  uplift  hypocrites 


222     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

believe  that  the  only  safe  place  for  booze 
is  in  their  own  sideboards. 

All  the  thrills  and  sunshine  of  a  drink 
shoulji  be  denied  the  poor.  Like  the  horse, 
they  must  be  kept  in  condition  constantly 
to  slave  for  their  hay  and  occasional  oats 
and  for  the  social  swine  who  revel  in  drink 
and  wallow  in  waste.  These  drug-store 
beauties  and  dog-fondlers  can  never  ap- 
preciate the  wounds  they  make  when  they 
hand  to  a  poor  honest  girl  their  cast  off 
finery.  She  might  gladly  accept  a  new 
garment  from  the  hand  of  charity,  but  one 
that  has  been  sinned  in  and  bears  the 
finger  marks  of  the  lecher  leads  the  noble 
soul  of  pure  womanhood  to  shrink  from 
the  unclean  offering.  The  working  girl 
more  highly  prizes  the  calico  of  chastity 
than  the  silk  of  sin. 

According  to  Royal  S.  Copeland,  Com- 
missioner of  Health  of  New  York,  the 
"400"  there  have  taken  to  the  lethifer- 
ous drug  habit  and  are  vigorously  defend- 
ing it. 

In  an  address,  on  December  11, 1918,  in 
Chicago,  he  said : 


Sequence         223 

We  are  experiencing  considerable  dif- 
ficulty in  fighting  this  nefarious  practice, 
and  are  forced  to  meet  powerful  obstacles 
put  in  our  way  by  the  wealthy  and  influ- 
ential. I  know  a  prominent  New  York 
City  society  woman  who  is  interested  in 
the  anti-drug  campaign,  who  is  herself  an 
addict. 


Another  phase  of  creeping  social  cor- 
ruption, due  to  willful,  though  well-in- 
tended efforts  at  juvenile  sex  precocious- 
ness  has  made  its  appearance  in  the  schools 
of  fashion  and  wealth.  At  the  conven- 
tion of  the  Illinois  Federation  of  Wo- 
men's Clubs,  recently,  Miss  Lutie  Stearns 
charged  that  in  many  fashionable  girls' 
schools  there  are  " underground"  libra- 
ries filled  with  unwholesome  sex  stories. 
She  said: 

In  my  niece's  school  they  placed  the 
books  on  the  lower  part  of  the  lockers  in 
a  place  meant  for  rubbers.  As  soon  as  a 
girl  got  through  with  one  book  she  put 
it  back  and  got  another.  One  book  my 
niece  brought  home  was  Three  Weeks, 


224     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

Literature  designed  to  gnaw  through 
the  bars  of  virtue  and  to  teach  budding 
womanhood  that  her  lips  are  for  he-pas- 
turage, and  that  in  the  words  of  the  old 
song,  everybody  is  doing  it,  and  that  the 
less  she  wears  the  more  flies  she  will  at- 
tract, is  the  kind  of  printed  slush  that  sells 
and  corrupts. 

The  public  press  under  date  of  April  2, 
1920,  contained  the  following : 

LONDON,  April  2. — Prevailing  fashions 
in  women's  gowns  were  vigorously  as- 
sailed in  a  sermon,  recently,  by  the  Rev. 
Bernard  Vaughan,  the  widely  known  Jes- 
uit Father,  whose  essays  and  sermons  on 
morality  and  home  life  have  for  the  last 
twenty  years  attracted  great  attention 
throughout  the  world. 

Among  other  things  he  said:  "In  days 
gone  by  ladies  dressed  for  dinner,  now 
they  undress  for  it.  Women's  clothing 
ought  to  serve  three  purposes,  of  decency, 
of  warmth,  and  of  ornament.  Women  in 
their  mad  craze  for  what  is  known  as 
'emotional  gowns'  sin  against  every  canon 
of  good  taste.  Such  dresses  are  immodest, 
unhealthy,  and  as  ugly  as  they  are  expen- 
sive. Girls  who  follow  the  up-to-date 


Sequence  225 

fashions  are  ruining  their  own  and  their 
neighbor's  souls  as  well  as  their  own  bod- 
ies. Designers  of  fashions  seem  to  be  de- 
void as  much  of  taste  as  of  principle. ' ' 

Kissing,  in  the  days  of  Louis  XII  of 
France,  attained  its  greatest  popularity. 
A  wave  of  revulsion  finally  checked  and 
withered  it. 

Since  Venus  said  to  Adonis,  "Graze 
on  my  lips,"  there  has  developed,  as  a  part 
of  the  white  man's  civilization,  a  more  in- 
tensified osculatory  contact,  generating 
amatory  thrills  which  are  wantonly  pro- 
longed by  facial  burrowing  and  neck 
rigidity. 

The  kiss  has  become  a  moral  pestilence 
in  social  centers,  and  as  now  administered 
it  quite  properly  may  be  called  Platonic 
concupiscence. 

Mile.  Walska,  the  noted  opera  singer; 
speaking  for  many  of  her  sex,  said:  "I 
hate  a  man  who  does  not  kiss  well. " 

Shall  women  smoke,  is  another  live  ques- 
tion on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic.  The 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  of  London,  under  pressure, 


226     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

has  opened  smoking  rooms  for  the  young 
women  who  have  demanded  it. 

London  physicians  declare  that  there 
never  has  been  so  much  smoking  by  wo- 
men as  at  present.  It  is  a  common  ex- 
perience to  see  well-dressed  women  smok- 
ing as  they  leave  the  theaters,  and  in  the 
daytime  many  women  smoke  in  limousines 
or  taxicabs.  From  Palm  Beach  hotels,  the 
Vampire  Queen's  studio,  and  Vassar  Col- 
lege comes  a  chorus  of  approval. 

Another  result  of  developing  social  be- 
devilment,  through  propaganda  and  per- 
sonal contact,  is  the  female  chromo. 

Roseate  pigments  worked  in  by  the  elec- 
tric needle,  in  the  hand  of  the  tattoo  ar- 
tist, to  have  a  blush  rose  tint  permanently 
stamped  on  their  features,  is  the  latest 
London  fad  amongst  so-called  "  society 
ladies."  About  three-fourths  of  the  aris- 
tocracy carry  tattoo  marks — generally 
just  above  the  knee — and  the  designs  are 
invariably  dragons,  butterflies,  snakes,  or 
the  family  crest. 

A  leading  London  professor  of  the  art 
asserts  that  his  patrons  belong  generally 


Sequence  227 

to  the  *  'upper  classes,"  and  include  ladies 
of  title  and  even  royalty. 

According  to  government  war-tax  re- 
turns American  women  paid  $750,000,000 
for  rouge,  powder,  perfume,  and  lip  sticks 
during  1919. 

Mrs.  Grace  W.  Humiston,  a  noted  New 
York  City  lawyer,  in  a  recent  address, 
treating  of  wayward  girls  and  present  day 
social  conditions,  said  : 

If  the  girl  appeals  to  the  police  she  is 
sent  up ;  if  to  the  church  she  is  set  aside, 
segregated,  as  not  the  person  for  other 
girls'  companionship,  and  if  she  goes  home 
she  is  scolded. 

School  girls  to-day  know  more  about 
sex  relations  than  older  women  starting 
out  in  married  life.  In  Chicago  alone 
there  are  2000  girls  between  the  ages  of 
thirteen  and  seventeen  " missing." 

Show  girls  in  a  New  York  City  theater 
were  forced  by  the  manager  to  witness  an 
obscene  motion  picture  show  or  lose  their 
jobs. 

It  has  been  published  that  the  "  White 
Door,"  in  New  York  City,  is  a  resort  con- 
ducted for  the  purpose  of  training  young 
girls  for  immoral  purposes.  The  house- 


228     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

keeper  of  this  haven  of  sin  gave  the  keys 
to  the  District  Attorney  with  the  request 
that  he  end  its  existence.  This  he  refused 
to  do,  saying  that  "the  best  men  in  New 
York  went  there." 

Mrs.  Humiston  relates  the  pathetic  ex- 
perience of  a  young  girl  which,  likely,  has 
been  duplicated  throughout  the  country 
thousands  of  times  during  the  war  for 
democracy  by  uniforms  on  the  backs  of 
eager  libidinists. 

The  man  in  question  was  a  major  in  the 
United  States  Army.  He  said  to  the  girl 
before  he  left  that  he  did  not  expect  to 
come  back  and  that  in  the  eyes  of  the  Lord 
they  were  man  and  wife.  He  did  not  lose 
his  life  at  the  front  as  he  expected,  and 
when  he  returned  home  he  found  that  the 
girl  who  trusted  in  him  was  a  mother.  He 
was  astounded  at  the  news  and  said  to  her, 
"You  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  yourself." 

This  should  lead  the  most  hardened  to 
exclaim:  "Oh,  military  uniform,  how 
many  crimes  are  concealed  in  thy  folds!" 

Our  Constitution  should  be  a  gushing 
fountain  of  justice;  and  our  flag  a  shel- 


Sequence  229 

tering  mantle  for  all  of  our  people;  and 
our  military  uniform,  on  the  back  of  an 
American  soldier,  a  woman's  shield  rather 
than  an  incantation  in  the  pathway  of 
virtue. 

On  April  10, 1919,  Mrs.  Ellen  O'Orady, 
deputy  police  commissioner  of  New  York 
City,  announced  a  crusade  by  women  de- 
tectives against  proprietors  of  moving- 
picture  theaters  displaying  such  "  sugges- 
tive, immoral,  and  filthy  films"  as  she 
discovered  on  a  tour  of  the  movie  houses. 
She  said: 

The  clergy,  educators,  judges,  and  wel- 
fare workers  might  as  well  lock  up  the 
churches,  shut  the  books,  and  close  the 
courts,  if  they  are  going  to  permit  the 
filthy  motion  pictures  that  are  being 
shown  in  New  York  and  throughout  the 
country. 

Juvenile  delinquency  is  increasing  rap- 
idly and  is  largly  due  to  the  poison  being 
instilled  into  juveniles  in  moving  picture 
houses. 

Two  girls  of  14  years,  the  children  of 
foreigners,  were  brought  into  my  office. 
I  asked  them  what  was  the  matter — what 


230     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

they  intended  to  make  of  themselves. 
They  answered:  "We  want  to  be  Amer- 
ican girls  like  the  moving  pictures.  Have 
a  good  time,  automobiles,  and  nice 
clothes." 

Imagine  the  kind  of  Americanization 
these  children  have  had. 

Then,  there  was  the  case  of  two  girls  of 
fifteen,  who  started  to  flirt  with  a  man  of 
forty  on  a  street  car.  This  is  what  they 
said  to  each  other:  "Say,  kid,  let's  vamp 
the  guy." 

If  something  is  not  done  to  safeguard 
the  morals  of  our  boys  and  girls  I  don't 
know  what  will  become  of  them. 

In  1914,  the  black  eagle  of  Germany 
entered  the  dark  clouds  of  war  with  a  bird 
of  Paradise,  called  Democracy.  For  four 
years,  with  vulture  beaks  and  talons  at 
each  other's  hearts,  they  rattled  all  of  the 
thrones  of  Europe  and  lacerated  all  of  the 
constitutions  of  the  world  and  sent  ten 
millions  of  souls  to  eternity,  in  an  effort 
either  to  expand  the  national  hogyard,  or 
to  disseminate  the  blessings  of  democracy. 

At  the  end  of  the  conflict  the  eagle  came 
tumbling  to  the  earth,  a  badly  rumpled 


Sequence  231 

and  bedraggled  mess.  The  bird  of  Para- 
dise had  lost  many  of  her  gaudy  feathers, 
her  topknot,  and  the  quills  from  her  tail, 
and  while  perched  on  the  ruins  of  mon- 
archy billing  and  oiling  the  fragments  of 
her  once  radiant  plumage  and  surveying 
the  devastation  wrought,  the  serpent  of 
Bolshevism  uncoiled  in  the  city  of  Petro- 
grad  and  since  has  been  extending  its 
monstrous  and  slimy  trail  to  various  parts 
of  Europe  with  a  view  to  encircling  the 
globe  and  crushing  within  its  mighty  folds 
the  tottering  bird  of  Democracy.  This 
new  social  Behemoth  has  annihilated  mo- 
rality; declared  sin  to  be  a  social  myth; 
woman  the  servant  and  plaything  of  man ; 
children  the  wards  of  the  state;  matri- 
mony a  social  relation  subject  to  the  will 
of  the  parties  and  the  Ten  Command- 
ments too  arbitrary  for  the  limber  moral- 
ity of  the  new  school. 

The  days  of  monumental  wealth,  pinch- 
ing poverty,  imperial  fops,  crushing 
trusts  and  sable  coats  for  queens  of  fash- 
ion are  surely  passing. 

The  Bolshevik  hen  is  laying  her  eggs 


232     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

upon  our  shores  and  hatching  vipers  that 
are  spreading,  like  a  pestilence,  through- 
out the  land.  Their  doctrines  and  pur- 
poses are  clearly  disclosed  in  a  circular 
scattered  in  the  streets  of  Seattle  during 
the  recent  shipyard  strike,  which  reads 
as  follows: 

RUSSIA  DID  IT 

Shipyard  Workers — You  left  the  ship- 
yards to  enforce  your  demands  for  higher 
wages.  Without  you  your  employers  are 
helpless.  Without  you  they  cannot  make 
one  cent  of  profit — their  whole  system  of 
robbery  has  collapsed. 

The  shipyards  are  idle ;  the  toilers  have 
withdrawn  even  though  the  owners  of  the 
yards  are  still  there.  Are  your  masters 
building  ships  ?  No.  Without  your  labor 
power  it  would  take  all  the  shipyard  em- 
ployers of  Seattle  and  Tacoma  working 
eight  hours  a  day  the  next  thousand  years 
to  turn  out  one  ship.  Of  what  use  are 
they  in  the  shipyards? 

It  is  you  and  you  alone  who  build  the 
ships ;  you  create  all  the  wealth  of  society 
to-day;  you  make  possible  the  $75,000 
sable  coats  for  millionaires'  wives.  It  is 
you  alone  who  can  build  the  ships. 


Sequence         233 

They  can't  build  the  ships.  You  can. 
Why  don't  you? 

There  are  the  shipyards ;  more  ships  are 
urgently  needed;  you  alone  can  build 
them.  If  the  masters  continue  their  dog- 
in-the-manger  attitude,  not  able  to  build 
the  ships  themselves  and  not  allowing  the 
workers  to,  there  is  only  one  thing  left 
for  you  to  do. 

Take  over  the  management  of  the  ship- 
yards yourselves;  make  the  shipyards 
your  own ;  make  the  jobs  your  own ;  decide 
the  working  conditions  yourselves ;  decide 
your  wages  yourselves. 

In  Russia  the  masters  refused  to  give 
their  slaves  a  living  wage  too.  The  Rus- 
sian workers  put  aside  the  bosses  and 
their  tool,  the  Russian  government,  and 
took  over  industry  in  their  own  interests. 

There  is  only  one  way  out;  a  nation- 
wide general  strike  with  its  object  the 
overthrow  of  the  present  rotten  system 
which  produces  thousands  of  millionaires 
and  millions  of  paupers  each  year. 

The  Russians  have  shown  you  the  way 
out.  What  are  you  going  to  do  about  it1? 
You  are  doomed  to  wage  slavery  till  you 
die  unless  you  wake  up,  realize  that  you 
and  the  boss  have  not  one  thing  in  com- 
mon, that  the  employing  class  must  be 


234     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

overthrown,  and  that  you,  the  workers, 
must  take  over  the  control  of  your  jobs, 
and  through  them,  the  control  over  your 
lives  instead  of  offering  yourselves  up  to 
the  masters  as  a  sacrifice  six  days  a  week, 
so  that  they  may  coin  profits  out  of  your 
sweat  and  toil. 

The  common  people  will  no  longer  bear 
the  burden  of  Kaiser  wardrobes  worth 
half  a  million,  cared  for  by  a  dozen  valets 
and  a  corps  of  tailors,  nor  of  fabulous 
salaries  paid  by  the  consumers'  coin. 

The  vast  army  of  clean  men  and  women 
the  world  over  must  unceasingly  struggle 
against  the  powers  of  evil  or  be  over- 
whelmed in  its  turbulent  billows. 

Those  of  us  who  are  of  the  Protestant 
faith  might  as  well  look  at  conditions  as 
they  are.  The  stones,  one  by  one,  are 
dropping  from  the  walls  of  our  temple, 
and  its  very  foundations  are  threatened 
by  our  own  spiritual  indolence,  monetary 
idolatry,  matrimonial  cozening  and  di- 
vorce paternity.  We  are  now  harvesting 
mostly  cockle  through  accumulated  neg- 
lect of  our  wheat  fields. 


Sequence         235 

Our  perversity  is  stampeding  the 
shepherds  of  our  flocks,  who  in  despair, 
behold  Thor  marshaling  the  spirit  of  evil 
from  out  the  gathering  clouds  of  a  brood- 
ing, godless  materialism. 

A  wail  comes  from  out  the  heart  of  a 
self-confessed,  slipping  and  withering 
Christianity,  which  is  magnified  in  the 
thousands  of  crumbling  churches  at  the 
country  crossroads,  tenanted  by  bats  and 
owls,  a  lingering  rebuke  to  the  pagan  de- 
scendants of  former  Christian  founders, 
who,  centuries  ago,  chafing  under  God's 
ten  restraining  laws  and  boiling  with  re- 
bellion, like  birds,  chattering  and  turbu- 
lent, bent  on  a  less  burdensome  moral 
hygiene,  spread  their  wings  and  with  their 
doctrine:  " Faith  is  sufficient  unto  salva-^ 
tion"  pushed  their  beaks,  charged  with 
the  poison  of  falsehood  and  bigotry,  under 
the  counterpane  of  a  creed,  which  had 
successfully  buffeted  the  storms  of  schism, 
the  powers  of  thrones  and  the  legions  of 
darkness,  for  more  than  fifteen  centuries. 

In  time,  entirely  ignored  by  their  for- 
mer Christian  associates,  and  hungry 


236     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

from  eating  out  of  the  empty  bowl  of 
"faith"  without  "works,"  they  soon  grew 
quarrelsome  and  fell  to  pecking  each 
other's  heads.  New  denominations  and 
church  buildings  gradually  sprang  up  in 
centers  of  civilization, — all  calling  them- 
selves Protestant,  with  each  sect  protest- 
ing against  Rome  and  each  other,  until, 
under  its  ceaseless  discords,  and  grace- 
less imitation  sacraments,  it  has  finally 
winged  itself. 

In  point  are  the  observations  of  Dean 
Welldon,  of  England,  who,  on  February 
4, 1920,  said: 

The  world  is  rocking  under  men's  feet. 
Society  is  threatened  by  forces  which  re- 
pudiate the  Christian  faith  and  the  Chris- 
tian moral  code.  The  Church  runs  grave 
risk  of  losing  her  influence  upon  national 
life.  The  decadence  of  regular  church- 
going  has  long  been  a  cause  of  anxiety. 
The  statistics  of  divorce  are  alarming,  and 
it  may  be  necessary  to  rebuild  human  mor- 
als from  the  foundation.  Meanwhile  the 
Church  is  disregarded  because  she  is  di- 
vided. It  is  too  much  to  expect  the  world 


Sequence  237 

to  listen  to  her  when  she  speaks  with 
many  discordant  voices. 


Dean  Welldon's  postulation  as  to  mod- 
ern Protestantism  presents  a  striking  pic- 
ture of  the  ungovernable  evolution  of  man- 
made  creeds.  The  foundations  are  break- 
ing up  and  the  wreckage  is  drifting  on  the 
tide  of  monetary  idolatry  out  into  the 
calm,  congenial  ocean  of  Christian  Sci- 
ence. 

After  the  Battle  of  Waterloo  an  army 
chaplain  went  to  Wellington  and  said: 
"What  am  I  to  do  now  that  the  war  is 
over?  I  was  a  chaplain  in  the  army." 
Wellington  replied:  "You  are  a  minister 
of  the  gospel.  What  are  your  marching 
orders  ? ' ' 

In  Mark  16 :15  are  found  the  marching 
orders. 

And  He  said  unto  them,  go  ye  into  all 
the  world,  and  preach  the  gospel  to  every 
creature.  He  that  believeth  and  is  bap- 
tized shall  be  saved ;  but  he  that  believeth 
not  shall  be  damned. 


238     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

How  many  ministers  dare,  from  the 
pulpit,  to  tell  their  people  that  unless  they 
keep  the  commandments  they  "  shall  be 
damned." 

With  too  many  fair-weather  Christians, 
going  to  church  is  a  social  affair,  and  not 
a  place  to  have  one's  sins  inventoried  or 
one's  conscience  pricked.  If  a  courageous 
preacher,  with  a  proper  concept  of  his 
clerical  duties,  should  cry  out  to  the  low 
necks  and  snowy  shirt  fronts  before  him, 
as  did  John  the  Baptist,  in  the  wilderness, 
to  the  Pharisees  and  Sadducees :  ' '  O  gen- 
eration of  vipers,  who  hath  warned  you  to 
flee  from  the  wrath  to  come?"  like  the 
" Golden-mouthed"  John  of  Antioch,  he 
would  be  told  that  in  Pontus  is  a  good 
place  to  die. 

,Are  not  mental  drippings  consciously 
concocted  by  too  many  preachers  for  the 
purpose  of  securing  the  loaves  and  fishes 
rather  than  as  a  moral  specific  ?  The  min- 
ister must  preach  to  please  the  people, 
and  does  his  best  on  an  empty  stomach. 

In  a  second-class  city  of  the  state,  ten 
clergymen  have  resigned  within  a  year. 


Sequence         239 

One  Baptist  clergyman  has  taken  to  can- 
dy-making, and  two  of  other  denomina- 
tions have  thrown  up  their  commissions 
and  entered  politics. 

Since  Henry  Ward  Beecher  sold  a  slave 
girl  at  auction  from  his  pulpit,  many  fads 
have  been  unavailingly  introduced  to  cen- 
tralize interest. 

"Babe"  Euth  on  the  diamond,  and 
"Billy"  Sunday  on  the  platform  are  now 
the  leading  swatters  of  balls  and  sins. 

Prohibition — the  offspring  of  cranks, 
the  forger  of  chains,  the  illicit  still  and 
home-brew  incubator,  the  assassin  of  ora- 
tory, the  mental  bug-breeder,  the  friend 
of  the  grave-digger,  is  the  prolific  mother 
of  a  vast  army  of  hypocrites,  sneaks, 
criminals,  and  Bolsheviks,  who,  Samson- 
like,  will  uproot  the  pillars  of  faith,  and 
beslime  the  goddess  of  morality  as  did  the 
viper  the  hand  of  Paul. 

The  weeds  of  the  fields,  for  a  time,  flour- 
ish and  scatter  their  baneful  seeds  which 
spring  up  and  choke  the  plantings  of  man, 
till  harvested  by  the  frosts  of  autumn. 
Fads  and  frivolities,  like  the  weeds,  will 


240     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

bloom  in  church,  state,  and  nation  until 
the  grace  of  God,  when  He  shall  be  so 
pleased,  shall  again  lacquer  the  souls  of 
men  against  the  corroding  attacks  of  sin, 
and  lift  them  from  the  "Slough  of  Des- 
pond" into  the  clear  blue  of  a  resonant 
faith  and  a  rosy  hope. 
'  The  appendix-extrication  fad,  which 
enabled  women  to  talk  of  their  operations 
instead  of  their  neighbors  at  social  func- 
tions, has  run  its  course,  and  this  intes- 
tinal switch  will  be  permitted  to  serve  na- 
ture hereafter  instead  of  the  surgical  ex- 
pert in  quest  of  fat  for  his  bank  account. 

The  Oregon  State  Medical  Association 
at  its  convention  in  Portland,  reported, 
under  date  of  June  5,  1920,  that  "  opera- 
tions for  removal  of  the  appendix  are  go- 
ing out  of  style.  Much  that  was  called 
appendicitis  in  recent  years  was  not  that 
at  all,  but  plain  stomachache." 

The  smoke  of  immorality  is  very  dense 
in  France.  Under  date  of  Paris,  March 
26,  1920,  we  find  this  printed: 

The  League  for  the  Reform  of  Dress 
and  Theatrical  Morals  issued  a  protest 


Sequence  241 

against  the  advertised  appearance  of 
Kenee  de  Bauga,  the  " modern  Venus,"  in 
a  revue  at  the  Olympic  Theater  to-night. 
The  advertisement  stated  that  Mile,  de 
Bauga  would  appear  on  the  stage  nude, 
and  the  reform  league  demanded  that  the 
police  prevent  this  "  disgraceful  exhibi- 
tion." The  Olympic  caters  largely  to 
Americans  and  other  foreigners. 

Seven  centuries  back  we  find  the  fore- 
going paralleled. 

In  the  thirteenth  century  more  than 
once  the  Government  suppressed  the  sa- 
cred plays  in  France  on  account  of  their 
evil  effects  upon  morals.  In  England  mat- 
ters seem  to  have  been  if  possible  worse ; 
and  Warton  has  shown  that  on  at  least  one 
occasion  in  the  fifteenth  century  Adam 
and  Eve  were  brought  upon  the  stage 
strictly  in  their  state  of  innocence.  In  the 
next  scene  the  fig  leaves  were  introduced. 

Sisley  Huddleston  in  the  May,  1920, 
Atlantic  Monthly,  calls  present-day  con- 
ditions "the  menace  of  the  world."  He 
comments  as  follows : 


242     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

The  diagnosis  of  the  malady  is  not  diffi- 
cult. There  is,  first,  this  crazy  seeking  af- 
ter artificial  amusements,  generally  of  an 
unpleasant  kind ;  there  is  a  love  of  display 
that  runs  to  the  utmost  eccentricity ;  there 
is  a  wave  of  criminality;  there  is  an  un- 
scrupulous profiteering,  a  cynical  disre- 
gard of  suffering,  a  mad  desire  to  get 
rich  quickly,  no  matter  by  what  means, 
and  there  is  a  reluctance  to  do  any  genu- 
ine work.  You  can  visit  any  capital  and 
you  will  find  these  characteristic  stigmata. 
This  pathological  condition  is  certainly 
the  legacy  of  war.  Men's  mental  outlook 
has  changed.  Those  who  were  sober,  in- 
dustrious citizens,  content  to  rear  their 
families  and  to  walk  usefully  and  humbly 
in  the  world,  are  now  stricken  by  the  wild 
notion  of  having  a  "good  time" — a  good 
time  that  means  the  easy  earning  of  ques- 
tionable money,  its  prodigal  dispersal, 
forgetfulness  of  the  family,  nonproduc- 
tion  of  necessaries,  hopeless  confusion  and 
incompetence,  which  affects  private  as 
well  as  governmental  persons,  and  a  low- 
ering of  moral  values,  a  debasing  of  in- 
tellect. 

The  limber  Christianity  of  to-day  makes 
no  more  impression  upon  their  sin-seared 


Sequence  243 

souls  than  the  tread  of  a  pismire  upon  a 
block  of  granite. 

At  the  dawn  of  the  colonization  of  this 
country,  it  has  been  written  that : 

The  women  were  robust,  worked  on  the 
farms  in  the  busy  seasons,  reaping,  mow- 
ing, and  even  plowing  on  occasion ;  and  the 
hum  of  the  spinning  wheel  was  heard  in 
every  house.  An  athletic,  active,  indomit- 
able, prolific,  long-lived  race.  For  a 
couple  to  have  a  dozen  children,  and  for 
all  the  twelve  to  reach  maturity,  to  marry, 
to  have  large  families,  and  die  at  a  good 
old  age,  seems  to  have  been  the  rule  rather 
than  the  exception. 

Kemember  that  the  microbe  of  immor- 
ality works  slowly  but  fatally  in  the  dark 
recesses  of  human  paste. 

Since  the  Pilgrim  fathers  greased  their 
boots  with  ham  rinds  at  Plymouth  Rock, 
and  our  antecedents  dyed  their  breeches 
with  the  juice  of  the  butternut  hull,  and 
astride  of  a  rail  whittled  through  a  horse 
trade,  and  tacked  the  pelts  of  the  enemies 
of  the  hennery  on  the  barn  door,  and  put 
doughnuts  in  the  contribution  box,  many 


244     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

strange  beasts,  in  the  shape  of  new  tastes, 
habits,  desires,  and  passions,  have  come  to 
us  from  other  shores,  or  have  reached  us 
on  the  tide  of,  our  own  blood. 

When  it  enters  a  man's  head  that  he 
can  toss  flat  water  cocktails  under  his  belt 
with  the  safety  that  a  rooster  crams  corn 
into  his  crop;  or  that  he  can  frequently 
cast  the  tappings  of  his  virility  into  un- 
sanitary pockets,  and  muss  up  every 
Thamar  at  the  crossroads;  and  that  the 
creed  of  reason  is :  "Let  us  eat,  drink,  and 
be  merry  for  to-morrow  we  die,"  and  when 
such  sentiments  acquire  general  ascend- 
ancy in  any  nation,  that  nation  is  just  as 
sure  to  die  of  moral  and  physical  leprosy, 
as  is  a  country  parson  to  pass  the  plate 
when  there's  a  stranger  in  the  church. 

Character  and  intellect  alone  are  no 
longer  passports  to  the  coveted  shade  of 
the  social  weed.  Coin,  tin  titles,  and  tog- 
gery are  the  American  highways  to  that 
Elysian  field. 

In  my  boyhood  the  child  and  its  dairy 
met  in  the  homespun  maternal  lap;  in 
my  manhood  I  find  that  spot  draped  in 


Sequence  245 

silks,  the  dairy  farrow,  and  in  place  of 
the  child  a  perfumed  pup. 

In  '48  a  man  pushed  bock  beer  over  a 
pine  bar.  Later  he  and  companions  dug 
gold  while  his  wife  cooked  the  corned  beef 
and  cabbage.  Soon  on  the  crest  of  a  yel- 
low stream  we  see  the  physically  broad- 
gauged  daughter  Mary  ride  into  the  arms 
of  a  worthless,  impecunious  count  from 
the  throne  pound  of  royalty.  The  press 
from  Cleopatra's  Needle  to  the  Golden 
Gate  was  full  of  idiotic  drooling  over  the 
social  achievements  of  a  prospector's 
daughter,  who  had  sold  herself,  as  has 
many  another,  with  the  same  deliberation, 
but  with  less  return  than  comes  to  a 
farmer  from  a  litter  of  pigs. 

The  ambition  of  many  suddenly  en- 
riched and  mentally  idle  females,  as  soon 
as  they  have  shed  their  pinfeathers,  is  to 
lift  themselves  by  their  golden  garters 
into  the  festering  lap  of  swelldom, — the 
tango,  shimmy,  turkey  trot,  grizzly  bear, 
bunny  hug,  fountain  dip,  Texas  Tommy, 
Harem  trot,  chicken  slide,  hesitation 
waltz,  hitchy-koo,  peacock  glide,  boll- wee- 


246     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

vil  wiggle,  constipation  pose, — and  into 
the  stinking  palatial  odors  that  have  pol- 
luted the  air  for  more  than  forty  cen- 
turies. 

How  soon  these  society  sprouts  feign 
to  forget  that  many  of  the  ancestors  of 
the  social  bungholes  with  whom  they  herd, 
worked,  and  stunk  their  way  across  the 
ocean  in  cattle  ships,  while  clad  in  wooden 
shoes  and  linsey-woolsey  mother-made 
shirts,  which  were  so  full  of  crawling, 
energetic  life  that  it  would  require  the  spit 
of  St.  Patrick  to  banish  it. 

The  social  flummery  that  has  oozed  out 
of  the  bowels  of  wealth,  with  all  of  its 
enervating  tendencies,  is  the  mother  of  a 
moral  condition  in  this  country  to-day, 
which,  slowly  yet  surely,  is  sapping  the 
man-  and  womanhood  of  this  republic 
and  preparing  it  for  the  day  when  a  warn- 
ing of  this  kind  will  be  scoffed  at,  when  the 
buffoon  will  be  preferred  to  the  statesman, 
the  money-lender  to  the  preacher,  the 
jug  to  the  child,  and  the  song  of  the  harlot 
to  the  dulcet  tones  of  the  vesper  bell. 


Sequence  247 

Whither  are  we  tending  and  what  are 
some  of  the  signs  ? 

A  United  States  Senate  of  millionaires ; 
political  control  of  members  of  Congress ; 
graft  and  bribery  in  every  civic  highway 
from  the  municipal  dog-catcher  to  the  cus- 
todian of  the  State  seal ;  contempt  for  the 
Constitution,  the  courts  and  individual 
rights;  pernicious  demagogy  on  the 
stump;  the  slavery  of  the  political  boss; 
the  monetary  corruption  of  the  electorate ; 
the  gradual  segregation  of  the  people 
under  the  heads  of  capital  and  labor; 
socialistic  teachings,  the  mother  of  female 
degradation  and  of  fatherless  children; 
submitting  disputes  to  the  arbitration  of 
dynamite ;  and  disfranchising  millions  of 
men  because  God  forgot  to  brimstone 
their  skins. 

Since  the  Queen  of  Sheba  whisked  her 
be  jeweled  skirts  before  the  throne  of  the 
dazzled  Solomon,  and  then  exchanged 
spices  for  precious  stones,  deceit,  fraud, 
and  criminality  have  prevailed  in  all  the 
relations  of  man. 

In  business  we  have  the  tax-dodger  and 


248     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

the  import-duty  swindler;  the  scale-pan 
doctor  and  the  fresh-egg  fraud ;  the  milk- 
waterer  and  bob- veal  vender;  the  paste- 
diamonjcl  jeweler  and  the  black-diamond 
underweigher ;  sanded  sugar ;  wooden  nut- 
megs; calves-liver  coffee;  bastard  phos- 
phate; stone-pasted  silks;  fake  corn  and 
pile  cures ;  oleo  butter ;  beef  lard ;  fish-oil 
linseed;  plaster-of-paris  lead;  Peruna 
whiskey ;  Duffy's  hypocritical  malt ;  paint, 
county  history  and  atlas  swindlers ;  coal- 
tar  dye  f ood-dopers ;  rotten-egg  bakeries ; 
New  York  State  Havana;  home-made 
Turkish  cigarettes ;  the  fur-skin  imitator ; 
the  excelsior  hair  mattress;  curly  birch 
mahogany;  corncob  cow  feed;  the  note 
shaver;  real  estate  swindler;  worthless 
stock  vender ;  salted  mine  exploiter ;  short- 
yard  stick ;  concave  dry  measure ;  impure 
seed,  fake  art  and  rug  dealers ;  dishonest 
road-builder  and  crooked  overseer;  lying 
auto  salesman ;  heavs-doping  horse  trader ; 
hard- times  match  and  kerosene  merchant ; 
the  grocery  pass-book  padder;  the  job- 
bing plumber,  making  forty-eight  hours 
out  of  each  twenty-four;  the  Elgin  butter 


Sequence  249 

and  other  combination  arbitrary  price- 
fixing  crooks ;  bank  defaulters ;  the  arson 
trust;  insurance-swindlers;  trust-betray- 
ers; franchise-bribers;  criminal  monopo- 
lists; high-price  projectors  and  food-cor- 
nering felons.  These  furnish  some  of  the 
evidences  of  a  growing  class  of  business 
black-handers  amongst  us  who  carry  a 
Bible  in  one  hand  and  a  jimmy  in  the 
other,  and  who  superintend  Sunday  school 
one  day  and  criminal  business  the  remain- 
ing six. 

Since  Tarquin  was  banished  from  Rome 
for  the  rape  of  Lucrece,  and  the  temple  of 
Isis  wrecked  by  the  carnal  stunt  of  Mun- 
das,  myriads  of  the  he-portion  of  the  hu- 
man race  have  worshiped  at  the  shrine  of 
every  immorality  and  crime  known  to 
man. 

The  ancient  sins  of  the  bath  are  now 
practiced  with  revelry  and  relish.  Black- 
handing,  white  slavery,  grafting,  gam- 
bling, thieving,  robbing,  thugging,  dyna- 
miting, doping,  murdering,  kidnaping  and 
incest  are  some  of  the  occupations  of  the 
denizens  of  the  underworld. 


250     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

Price-fixing,  stock-gambling,  welshing, 
official  bribing,  commercial  plundering, 
destroying  evidence,  croaking  business 
rivals,  panic-breeding,  forging,  defaulting, 
embezzling,  perjuring,  seducing,  eloping, 
and  home-busting  have  occupied  the  re- 
cent attention  of  men  in  the  gilded  walks 
of  life. 

Social  and  business  tendencies  make  the 
outlook  as  dismal  as  the  efforts  of  the 
ancient  reasoners  to  locate  hell.  St.  Thom- 
as was  of  the  opinion  that  it  was  in  the 
center  of  the  earth.  Whiston  contended 
that  it  was  the  tail  of  a  comet.  Swinden 
strenuously  asserted  that  hell  was  the  sun. 
Some  early  theologians  held  this  and  ex- 
plained the  spots  in  the  sun  by  the  multi- 
tude of  souls. 

Numberless,  self  -  sacrificing  mothers 
and  spinsters,  living  and  dead,  with  lives 
as  clean  as  the  unblown  snow,  should  be 
distinguished  from  those  of  their  sex  who 
shirk  duty  and  toy  with  sin. 

The  clean  woman,  whether  pagan  or 
Christian,  always  has  been,  and  always 
will  be,  with  us,  as  the  following  proves. 


Sequence  251 

While  I  have  shown  one  side  of  the  pic- 
ture of  woman,  I  am  not  unmindful  of  the 
immaculate  Mary,  whose  divine  Son,  the 
personified  pledge  of  God  to  man,  by  His 
example  and  teachings,  so  leavened  the 
dough  of  man's  activities  that  he  was 
finally  led  proudly  to  adorn  the  brow  of 
woman  with  the  ennobling  titles  of  com- 
panion, wife  and  mother. 

In  the  first  centuries,  the  hen  of  Chris- 
tianity hatched  many  a  pullet  that  defied 
the  pagan  cockerels,  and  suffered  torture 
and  death,  rather  than  to  sacrifice  to  the 
stubnosed  gods  of  the  temples,  or  take  the 
proffered  apple  from  the  hand  of  Satan. 

Among  the  brightest  jewels  in  the  mas- 
sive crown  of  early  Christian  womanhood 
we  find : 

Fabiola,  the  founder  of  the  first  hospital 
in  Rome,  of  whom  St.  Jerome  said:  "She 
was  the  praise  of  the  Christians,  the  won- 
der of  the  Gentiles,  the  mourning  of  the 
poor,  and  the  consolation  of  the  monks. " 

Dorcas,  the  queen  of  the  needle,  whose 
handiwork  turned  the  bleak  winds  of  the 


252     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

Mediterranean  from  the  poor  widows  and 
children  of  Joppa. 

Genevieve,  a  pious  and  patriotic 
maiden,  whose  courage  saved  the  city  of 
Paris  from  the  scourge  of  Attila. 

Olympias,  the  beautiful  and  wealthy 
widow,  vainly  sought  in  marriage  by  the 
noblemen  around  her,  a  princess  in  liber- 
ality, who  purchased  the  freedom  of  hun- 
dreds of  slaves  and  sought  the  comfort 
of  the  sick,  the  imprisoned,  beggars,  and 
exiles. 

Monica  is  noted  as  a  wife  who  never 
uttered  a  reproachful  word  in  her  home, 
a  mother  whose  prayers  and  tears  re- 
claimed from  sin  and  gave  to  God  the 
matchless  St.  Augustine. 

Paula,  who  owned  a  whole  city  in  Italy, 
descended  from  the  Scipios  and  the  Grac- 
chi, and  one  of  the  richest  women  of  an- 
tiquity, a  fourth-century  patroness  of 
education  and  philanthropy,  a  co-worker 
of  St.  Jerome  in  his  warfare  upon  the  cor- 
ruption of  the  age,  and  who  lived  as  a 
slave  but  gave  as  a  princess,  built  a  hos- 
pital, monastery,  and  three  nunneries, 


Sequence         253 

prayed  to  die  in  beggary  and  to  be 
wrapped  in  the  shroud  of  a  stranger. 

Kindred  spirits  and  God-loving  women 
can  be  found  at  all  of  the  crossroads  along 
the  highway  of  time  from  Elizabeth,  con- 
cerning whose  son  Christ  said:  "Among 
them  that  are  born  of  women  there  hath 
not  risen  a  greater  than  John  the  Bap- 
tist," down  to  our  own  American  queens 
of  charity  who  constantly  minister  to  our 
poor  and  afflicted,  and  extend  their  noble 
work  to  other  climes. 

Even  Pagan  records  tell  us  of  the  wifely 
Artemisia,  who  consumed  her  husband's 
ashes  mixed  with  scented  water,  and  hon- 
ored his  memory  with  a  mausoleum  so 
wonderful  as  to  startle  the  world;  of 
Volumnia,  who  saved  Rome  from  the  ven- 
geance of  her  husband;  of  Julia  Domne, 
who  cast  herself  upon  an  assassin  to 
shield  her  son  and  received  the  death  blow ; 
of  Hortensia,  the  suffragette,  demanding 
justice  at  the  hands  of  the  triumvirs  in  the 
market  place;  of  Lucrece  taking  her  life 
to  destroy  the  rape-wrecked  temple  of  her 
soul ;  of  Octavia,  who  brought  to  her  home 


254     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

the  bastards  of  the  sin-busted  Antony ;  of 
Boadecia,  who,  to  avenge  the  name  of  out- 
raged womanhood,  having  been  stripped 
and  scourged  by  Koman  officers,  rallied 
the  Britons  to  her  standard  and  led  the 
conflict  till  she  sent  seventy  thousand  Ro- 
man souls  howling  into  eternity.  To-day, 
innumerable  intellectual  and  saintly  wo- 
men can  be  found  on  every  rung  of  the 
social  ladder,  with  moral  breaths  as  sweet 
as  the  rose,  and  whose  maternal  instinct, 
rugged  as  the  oak,  often  has  led  them  into 
the  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death,  and 
whose  unsullied  characters  and  lofty  vir- 
tues would  adorn  the  most  exacting  civ- 
ilization. 

Since  the  war  closed  our  American  civic 
highways  have  been  burdened,  and  the 
public  oppressed  and  buncoed  by  a  bewil- 
dering number  of  alleged  charity  and  up- 
lift fads  and  schemes,  frequently  organ- 
ized for  personal  laudation  and  often  in- 
spirited by  the  vision  of  a  swivel  chair 
and  soft  job  in  the  distance. 

" America  for  Americans"  is  being 
pounded  into  the  human  ear  from  all 


Sequence  255 

angles  both  by  patriots  and  paid  exhorters, 
many  of  whom  are  mentally  unable  to 
sense  the  frightful  results  that  would  fol- 
low in  the  wake  of  a  strict  application  of 
this  doctrine. 

Is  there  not  danger  of  carrying  the  agi- 
tation of  Americanism  to  the  rebounding 
point?  There  are  better  than  thirteen 
millions  of  unnaturalized  working  people 
in  the  United  States  to-day  who  do  three- 
fourths  of  the  manual  labor  required  for 
the  production  of  our  marvelous  output. 

Labor  in  this  country  is  now  at  a  pre- 
mium, with  a  growing  inclination  to 
shorter  hours  and  higher  pay.  The  gates 
of  Castle  Garden  have  always  swung  land- 
ward and  if  you  go  back  far  enough,  his- 
tory will  tell  you  that  the  earliest  white 
settlers  here  were  foreigners.  Foreigners 
have  made  this  country  what  it  is  and  be- 
cause a  citizen  happens  to  be  born  fifty  or 
one  hundred  years  later  than  some  of  those 
who  have  preceded  us,  it  does  not  neces- 
sarily follow  that  that  citizen  is  a  less 
patriotic  member  of  the  commonwealth. 

We   have    always   had   agitators   and 


256     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

tongue  traitors  in  our  midst — every  na- 
tion has  them ;  we  will  always  have  them, 
but,  as  a  rule,  they  are  so  few  and  out- 
spoken that  they  are  generally  well  known. 

Remember  that  the  wealth  at  the  top 
of  our  social  structure  comprehends  but 
a  small  portion  of  our  population.  The 
laboring  element  forming  the  foundation 
for  our  social  structure  constitute  perhaps 
not  to  exceed  twenty-five  per  cent  of  our 
people,  while  the  great  middle  classes 
form  the  bulk  of  our  population  and  will 
always  stand  as  an  impassable  barrier  be- 
tween arrogant  wealth  on  the  one  hand, 
and  sometimes  unreasonable  labor  and 
agitators  on  the  other. 

We  need  as  laborers  a  million  or  two 
more  men  to  aid  in  the  basic  production 
of  our  country.  This  republic  has  a  repu- 
tation the  world  over  of  being  the  freest 
and  safest  habitation  for  man  known  to 
the  human  race.  A  propaganda  spread 
throughout  these  United  States  to  the  ef- 
fect that  foreigners  are  not  welcome  or 
that  as  soon  as  they  arrive  here  they  must 
go  through  a  system  of  Americanization, 


Sequence         257 

will  reach  other  shores  and  tend  unfavor- 
ably to  impress  those  who  might  anticipate 
seeking  homes  here.  Foreigners  who  have 
come  to  our  shores,  of  every  nationality, 
have  readily  become  assimilated  with  our 
people  and  submissive  to  our  laws,  and 
patriotic  in  their  support  of  our  Govern- 
ment. In  proof  of  this  I  call  attention  to 
an  article  in  the  March  number  of  the 
National  Geographic  Magazine  in  which 
William  J.  Showalter  says : 

Speaking  of  the  commonwealth  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, two  thirds  of  the  people  have 
sprung  from  parents  one  or  both  of  whom 
were  born  under  alien  flags.  Where  Paul 
Revere  lived  in  revolutionary  times,  is 
now  Little  Italy,  almost  as  foreign  in  the 
tongue  spoken  as  Naples  or  Genoa. 

With  only  one  third  of  the  State's  popu- 
lation born  of  parents  who  first  saw  the 
light  in  America,  how  small  must  be  the 
percentage  born  of  full  colonial  lineage  1 

But  is  Massachusetts  less  American  for 
its  tremendous  foreign  stock?  Look  at 
the  recruiting  records — holding  sixth 
place  in  population,  but  fifth  in  voluntary 
enlistments  for  the  World  War.  Look  at 
the  Liberty  loan  records — third  place  in 


258     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

the  first  and  second  loans  and  fourth 
place  in  the  other  three. 

What  we  need  in  this  country  is  a 
thicker  mixture  of  morality  in  our  Na- 
tional carburetor;  fewer  divorces  and 
more  prayers ;  less  dry  insanity  and  more 
mental  lubrication;  fewer  professional 
child-killers  and  birth-control  propagand- 
ists, on  the  one  hand,  and  larger  families, 
on  the  other;  more  Sunday  church  fre- 
quenters and  fewer  bed  loafers;  more 
ministers  who  will  preach  the  gospel  of 
salvation  as  it  came  to  us  from  the  Cross, 
rather  than  the  gospel  of  salvation  made 
easy;  and  fewer  men  who  worship  at  the 
shrine  of  the  dollar  and  vastly  more  who, 
from  a  contented  heart,  can  cry  out,  "Give 
me  neither  beggary  nor  riches:  give  me 
only  the  necessaries  of  life." 

If  our  nation  endures  it  will  not  be  by 
her  armies  and  her  fleets  alone  but  more 
particularly  through  clean,  pure  men  and 
women  in  whose  veins  will  flow  red  blood, 
and  in  whose  hearts  will  repose  a  patriot- 
ism such  as  boisterously  roamed  the  breast 


Sequence  259 

of  General  Warren  when  he  said:  "  "Tis 
sweet  to  die  for  one's  country." 

If  you  want  peace,  prepare  for  war. 
The  nation  with  the  largest  bank  account 
will  most  likely  be  the  successful  warrior 
of  the  future.  But  back  of  the  money  and 
the  guns  must  be  the  fighter.  To  have 
fighters,  mothers  must  teach  chivalry  to 
their  offspring.  They  must  say  to  their 
sons  as  they  practically  said  in  '61,  and 
as  the  Spartan  mother  was  accustomed  to 
say,  "My  son,  return  either  with  thy 
shield  or  upon  it."  And  the  fathers  must 
have  flowing  in  their  veins  the  blood  of  a 
Hannibal,  who  at  the  age  of  nine  years, 
in  a  heathen  temple,  took  an  eternal  oath 
of  enmity  against  Rome ;  of  Ethan  Allen, 
who  demanded  the  surrender  of  Ticonder- 
oga,  "In  the  name  of  the  Great  Jehovah 
and  the  Continental  Congress";  of  Law- 
rence, who  said,  "Don't  give  up  the  ship" ; 
of  Perry  who  sent  that  immortal  message 
from  Lake  Erie,  "We  have  met  the  enemy 
and  they  are  ours." 

Parents,  treat  your  children  kindly,  but 
firmly.  Set  before  them  morning,  noon, 


260     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

and  night,  the  example  of  Christian  liv- 
ing. Tell  them  that  no  nation  is  greater 
than  its  men  and  women  make  it ;  that  the 
constant  buffeting  of  any  immorality 
gradually  wears  down  the  finest  physique ; 
that  if  they  hope  to  be  credited  with  the 
manhood,  courage,  and  bravery  of  their 
ancestors,  they  must  live  as  did  their  an- 
cestors; and  that  no  nation  can  long  en- 
dure in  the  hearts  of  whose  people  immo- 
rality slumbers. 

In  the  medical  profession  there  is  a 
small  percentage  of  scavengers,  whose 
criminal  practices,  like  polecat  exhala- 
tions, tend  to  beslime  one  of  the  noblest 
callings  to  which  man  has  devoted  his 
genius  since  the  Esculapian  days. 

The  clean  men  of  the  medical  profes- 
sion, by  reason  of  direct  contact  with  the 
evil-doer,  can  do  more  to  save  the  race 
than  can  any  other  combination  of  civic 
or  moral  workers  now  engaged  in  social 
betterment. 

To  attain  the  desired  results  by  shack- 
ling the  prince  of  evil,  the  priesthood  and 
ministry  of  this  great  republic,  principal- 


Sequence  261 

ly  God-fearing  and  saintly  men,  must,  in 
the  interest  of  humanity,  join  in  a  cease- 
less onslaught  upon  the  evils  that  are  bur- 
rowing into  the  moral  fiber  of  our  people 
and  daily  weakening  the  spiritual  power 
of  the  sanctifying  story  of  the  life  of 
Christ. 

To  save  the  race  we  must,  as  a  people, 
so  legislate  and  so  live  that  those  who  dam 
or  pollute  the  stream  of  life  will  be  con- 
demned here,  and  our  faith  in  divine  jus- 
tice tells  us  that  they  will  be  damned 
hereafter. 

Let  the  willfully  unfruitful,  in  whose 
hearts  there  still  lingers  the  slightest 
gleam  of  Christian  faith,  fearfully  dwell 
on  the  fate  of  the  barren  fig  tree. 

The  duty-dodger  and  laggard  in  every 
line  may  read  his  destiny  in  the  parable 
of  the  napkin  capitalist. 

The  grafters,  profiteers,  war  hogs,  price- 
fixers,  stock-tricksters,  trust-weavers, 
money  idolaters,  food-cornering  felons, 
and  lust-sowers  the  world  over  should  re- 
flect that  God  said  to  the  rich  man,  while 
planning  barn  enlargement  for  his  grow- 


262     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

ing  wealth:  "Thou  fool,  this  night  thy 
soul  shall  be  required  of  thee." 

The  obstinate,  faithless,  restless,  high 
power  seeders  of  sin  will  not  be  checked  in 
their  nefarious  work  by  prophecies,  par- 
ables, commandments,  sermons,  threats 
of  hell,  or  the  judgment  of  God,  for,  like 
the  biblical  fool,  they  have  said  in  their 
hearts  "There  is  no  God." 

The  "sin-freely's"  of  to-day  feign  this 
belief  as  a  conscience  cover. 

For  appearance  only  are  thousands  of 
church  pews  warmed  by  canting  hypo- 
crites, who  pray  by  day  and  sin  by  night, 
and  affiliate  with  some  popular  satanic 
move,  as  a  smoke  screen. 

These  disciples  of  the  pagan  school  of 
matrix  scavengers,  embryo  assassins,  ma- 
ternity-regulators and  farrow-women 
breeders,  who  heed  not  the  command, 
1  i  Thou  shalt  not  kill ! ' '  constitute  a  greater 
menace  to  our  country  than  any  Bolshe- 
vik doctrine  which  has  ever  been  shaken 
from  the  brain  of  man  by  social  unrest. 

Oh,  atheist,  if  you  are  sincere,  stand 
with  me  before  the  templed  hills,  beneath 


Sequence         263 

the  starlit  dome,  look  into  that  wilderness 
of  worlds  moving  on  without  chance  or 
change,  cast  your  mortal  eye  upon  the 
blinding  light  and  shriveling  heat  of  the 
sun,  color  the  pansy  with  your  brush,  pro- 
duce the  scent  of  the  skunk  or  the  musk- 
deer,  chain  the  lightning,  quell  the  storm, 
control  the  seasons,  calm  the  raging  bil- 
lows with  your  outstretched  hand,  heal  the 
sick,  give  sight  to  the  blind,  define  life, 
annihilate  death,  destroy  a  single  grain 
of  sand  or  add  one  particle  of  new  matter 
to  the  world's  bulk — then  proclaim: 
" There  is  no  God." 

Whether  you  believe  it  or  not,  the  fact 
remains  that  the  Christian  religion  is  all- 
pervading,  and  for  two  thousand  years  it 
has  buffeted  immorality  and  crime  in 
every  form,  and  led  the  willing  along  the 
highway  of  justice  and  right.  Its  ten 
conscience  whips  have  been  its  only  laws, 
and  by  and  through  them  to-day,  it  mor- 
ally rules  more  than  a  third  of  the  human 
race,  and  the  beautiful  story  of  the  life  of 
Christ  has  l^een  told  to  all  of  the  peoples 
of  the  earth.  No  race  has  ever  been  dis- 


264     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

covered  which  did  not  believe  in  a  super- 
natural being  or  a  God  in  some  form. 
Cardinal  Gibbons  wrote : 

Every  philosopher  and  statesman  who 
has  discussed  the  subject  of  human  gov- 
ernments has  acknowledged  that  there  can 
be  no  stable  society  without  justice,  no 
justice  without  morality,  no  morality  with- 
out religion,  no  religion  without  God. 

The  pagan  philosopher  Plato  said : 

It  is  an  incontrovertible  truth  that  if 
God  presides  not  over  the  establishment  of 
a  city,  and  if  it  has  only  a  human  founda- 
tion, it  cannot  escape  the  greatest  calami- 
ties. If  a  State  is  founded  on  impiety  and 
governed  by  men  who  trample  on  justice, 
it  has  no  means  of  security. 

Long  before  Plato  lived  the  same  senti- 
ment was  expressed  by  the  Prophet  who 
said: 

Unless  the  Lord  build  the  house,  they 
labor  in  vain  that  build  it.  Unless  the 
Lord  keep  the  city,  he  watcheth  in  vain 
that  keepeth  it. 

In  the  Bible,  millions  of  copies  of  which 
are  printed  annually,  scattered  univer- 


Sequence  265 

sally,  heedlessly  read,  if  read  at  all,  and 
rarely  followed,  Isaiah,  said: 

The  nation  and  the  kingdom  that  will 
not  serve  Thee  shall  perish. 

Rousseau,  who,  though  classed  by  the 
scientists  as  a  lunatic,  showed  rare  sense 
when  he  wrote: 

Never  was  a  State  founded  that  did  not 
have  religion  for  its  basis. 

The  Greek  writer  Xenophon  made  this 
observation : 

Those  cities  and  nations  which  are  the 
most  devoted  to  divine  worship  have  al- 
ways been  the  most  durable  and  the  most 
wisely  governed,  as  the  most  religious 
ages  have  been  the  most  distinguished  for 
genius. 

From  the  mind  of  Hume  came  this 
thought : 

If  you  find  a  people  without  religion, 
rest  assured  that  they  do  not  differ  much 
from  the  brute  beasts. 

Cicero  exclaimed: 

I  know  not  whether  the  destruction 
of  piety  toward  the  gods  would  not  be 


266     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

the  destruction  also  of  good  faith,  of  hu- 
man society,  and  of  the  most  excellent  of 
virtues,  justice. 

Solon  of  Athens,  Lycurgus  of  Lace- 
daemon,  and  Numa  of  ancient  Rome,  built 
all  social  fabrics  upon  the  cornerstone  of 
religion. 

Voltaire  said: 

It  is  absolutely  necessary  for  princes 
and  people  that  the  idea  of  a  Supreme  Be- 
ing, Creator,  Governor,  Rewarder  and 
Avenger,  should  be  deeply  engraved  on 
the  mind. 

Rome  flourished  under  the  religious 
policy  of  Numa.  "The  vessel  of  state  was 
held  in  the  storm  by  two  anchors,  religion 
and  morality." 

The  great  endurance  of  the  Roman  re- 
public is  traced  by  historians  to  the  nat- 
ural virtues  exhibited  by  the  people,  and 
the  downfall  of  Rome  is  attributed  by 
Montesquieu  to  the  doctrine  of  Epicure- 
anism, which  broke  down  the  barrier  of 
religion  and  gave  free  scope  to  the  sea  of 
human  passions. 


Sequence         267 

Cardinal  Gibbons,  in  his  book  on  Our 
Christian  Heritage,  makes  this  observa- 
tion: 

Toward  the  close  of  the  last  century  an 
attempt  was  made  by  atheists  in  France 
to  establish  a  government  on  the  ruins  of 
religion,  and  it  is  well  known  how  signally 
they  failed.  The  Christian  Sabbath  and 
festivals  were  abolished,  and  the  churches 
closed.  The  only  tolerated  temple  of  wor- 
ship was  the  criminal  court,  from  which 
justice  and  mercy  were  inexorably  ban- 
ished, and  where  the  judge  sat  only  to  con- 
demn. The  only  divinity  recognized  by 
the  apostles  of  anarchy  was  the  goddess 
of  reason ;  their  high  priests  were  the  exe- 
cutioners; the  victims  for  sacrifice  were 
unoffending  citizens;  the  altar  was  the 
scaffold;  their  hymns  were  ribald  songs; 
and  their  worship  was  lust,  rapine,  and 
bloodshed. 

They  succeeded  in  a  few  weeks  in  de- 
molishing the  social  fabric  which  had  ex- 
isted for  thirteen  centuries,  and  De- 
Lamennais  says:  "They  accumulated 
more  ruin  than  an  army  of  Tartars  could 
have  left  after  a  six  years'  invasion." 

The  old  colonial  piety  which  gripped  the 
hand  of  poverty  has  departed  from  most 


268     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 

of  the  hearts  of  the  now  rapidly  vanish- 
ing, wealthy,  low  combs  of  Plymouth 
Bock  ancestry,  whose  daily  lives  are  a 
gilded  lie. 

You  will  always  find  God  with  the  hon- 
est, struggling  poor.  This  fact  was  rec- 
ognized by  the  signers  of  our  Declaration 
of  Independence  in  which  they  wrote: 

And  for  the  support  of  this  declaration, 
with  a  firm  reliance  on  the  protection  of 
Divine  Providence,  we  mutually  pledge 
to  each  other  our  lives,  our  fortunes,  and 
our  sacred  honor. 

There  are  thousands  of  college-made 
atheistic  she-bachelors,  whose  social  pass- 
port is  a  shredded  ancestry  or  the  gold  of 
business  pilferers,  who  parade  the  streets, 
picket  their  enemies,  assassinate  the  repu- 
tations of  opponents,  invade  Congress  and 
lobby  state  legislatures  in  furtherance  of 
schemes  to  eliminate  statutory  restrictions 
upon  their  nasty  work,  and,  finally  to  boss 
and  direct,  from  a  salaried  swivel  chair, 
the  social  and  sexual  acts  of  humanity. 

Prohibition,  the  mother  of  crime,  the 


Sequence  269 

hospital's  friend,  the  sower  of  widows  and 
orphans,  and  the  patron  of  crepe  and  flow- 
ers, was  bludgeoned  through  the  New 
York  State  Legislature  by  confronting 
members  with  the  record  of  their  past 
lives.  The  state  legislatures  throughout 
the  Union  when  in  session,  are  overrun  by 
he-  and  she-uplift  rats  who  carry  in  their 
fur  the  germs  of  every  conceivable  immo- 
rality, and  whose  uplift  printing  estab- 
lishments are  filling  the  homes  of  this 
Christian  nation  with  printed  stuff  so  vile 
that  the  perusal  of  it  would  cause  a  blush 
in  a  house  of  assignation. 

Procreation  literature,  now  widely  dis- 
seminated, together  with  anticonception 
knowledge,  has  deadened  all  fear  of  mul- 
tiplication resulting  from  sexual  contact. 

It  has  bred  in  the  rising  generation  a 
social  freedom  and  moral  laxity  well  il- 
lustrated by  the  following:  Recently  a 
respectable  girl  of  fifteen  years  of  age  was 
dressing  for  a  public  dance  without  cor- 
sets. Her  mother  told  her  to  put  on  her 
corsets.  She  declined,  saying,  "I  do  not 
want  to  go  and  be  a  wall  flower.  If  I 


270     Matrimony  Minus  Maternity 
wear  corsets  the  boys  won't  dance  with 


me.' 


It  is  generally  understood  that  the  girls 
who  wear  corsets  to  dances  park  them 
after  they  get  there. 

The  goddess  of  virtue  slumbers  while 
the  ants  of  evil  build  their  hills  in  unsen- 
tineled  American  homes. 

The  social  boll  weevil  and  pink  bell 
worm  are  at  work  in  the  tender  shoots  of 
youth  throughout  the  land,  precipitating 
a  degenerate  race  of  Cagots,  who,  ulti- 
mately, with  our  nation,  will  perish  from 
the  earth. 

If  the  Savior  lamented  over  the  morals 
of  the  Jerusalem  Jews,  He  would  surely 
give  them  a  passport  to  heaven  after 
standing  on  a  busy  corner  of  a  modern 
city  for  a  single  hour. 

There  is  a  story  that  the  transporting 
of  Cimabue's  " Madonna"  through  the 
streets  of  Florence,  in  the  old  days, 
blocked  traffic  and  stopped  business.  Can 
one  imagine,  even,  the  enactment  of  such 
a  scene  in  any  modern  city  of  the  world 
to-day?  Babe  Ruth,  Jack  Dempsey  or 


Sequence  271 

September  Morn  upon  a  city  street,  would 
come  nearer  blocking  traffic  than  any 
saint  or  painted  concept  that  ever  walked 
the  earth  or  bloomed  in  the  brain  of  art. 

The  writer  does  not  feel  that  the  entire 
world  is  sliding  into  hell,  but  does  believe 
that  it  has  a  very  good  start,  and  that  it 
is  about  time  for  our  national  and  moral 
patriots  to  squirt  a  little  Portland  cement 
into  their  spines,  and  to  proceed  with 
clubs  and  guns,  if  necessary,  to  break  up 
the  spawning  places  of  the  he-  and  she- 
scelestic  enemies  of  our  race  and  country. 

BRETHREN:  "It  is  high  time  to  awake 
out  of  sleep;  for  now  is  our  salvation 
nearer  than  when  we  believed.  The  night 
is  far  spent,  the  day  is  at  hand:  let  us 
therefore  cast  off  the  works  of  darkness, 
and  let  us  put  on  the  armor  of  light.  Let 
us  walk  honestly,  as  in  the  day:  not  in 
rioting  and  drunkenness,  not  in  chamber- 
ing and  wantonness,  not  in  strife  and  en- 
vying. But  put  ye  on  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  and  make  not  provision  for  the 
flesh,  to  fulfill  the  lusts  thereof." 


"Has  the  stage,  the  so-called  artistic  temperament, 
or  advanced  feminism  ever  yet  given  to  any  man  a 
wife — to  any  child  a  mother — to  either  husband  or 
child  a  home?"  "Are  the  exceptions  so  rare  that  they 
only  emphasize  the  rule?" 

Beauty  and  Nick 

BY  PHILIP  GIBBS 

"The  Premier  War  Correspondent" 

Author  of  "The  Eighth  Year,"  etc. 

$2.00  net.  $2.10  postpaid 

Mr.  Gibbs,  most  brilliant  of  war  correspondents, 
probes  deeper  than  any  living  writer.  Critics  declare 
that  his  best  work  is  in  Beauty  and  Nick — novelized 
facts  in  the  life  of  an  international  Star,  her  husband — 
and  a  Son,  "who  foots  the  bill." 

Beauty,  the  gifted  actress,  is  the  counterpart  of  the 
Mother-mummer  of  Christian  Reid's  DAUGHTER 
OF  A  STAR — and  both  women  are  the  antitheses  in 
culture  and  character  of  A  Far  Away  Princess. 

Every  man  who  loves  or  ever  will  love  a  woman 
MUST  read  "Beauty  and  Nick." 

Every  woman,  single  or  married,  SHOULD  read 
"Beauty  and  Nick." 

Every  Husband  and  every  Wife  that  prefers  a  Baby 
to  a  dog — a  home  to  a  domestic  kennel,  WILL  surely 
read  "Beauty  and  Nick." 

You  will  read  "Beauty  and  Nick,"  "The  Daughter 
of  a  Star"  and  "A  Far  Away  Princess"  more  than  once ; 
you  will  keep  them  till  your  children  are  grown  up, 
when  they  will  read  them  and  thank  you  for  your 
thoughtfulness. .  You  will  lend  or  commend  them  to 
the  "born  musician,"  to  the  "born  actor  or  actress," 
to  the  woman  with  an  uplift  mission — to  nosey  spin- 
sters, childless  divorcees,  temper-tongued  wives  and 
others  who  are  trying  to  squeeze  the  World  into  a 
globed  hell  for  normal  women  and  Homeless  Hus- 
bands. 

THE  DEVIN-ADAIR  COMPANY,  Publishers 

NEW  YORK 


"Life  is  too  short  for  reading  inferior  books" — Bryce 


Clean  literature  and  clean  womanhood  are 
the  keystones  of  civilization — and 

MY 
UNKNOWN  CHUM 

("AGUECHEEK") 
Foreword  by  HENRY  GARRITY 

"is  the  cleanest  and  best  all-round  book  in 
the  English  Language" 

"An  Ideal  Chum."  You  will  read  it  often  and  like  it  better 
the  oftener  you  read  it — once  read  it  will  be  your  chum  as 
It  is  now  the  chum  of  thousands.  You  will  see  France, 
Belgium,  England,  Italy  and  America — men  and  women  in 
a  new  light  that  has  nought  to  do  with  the  horrors  of  war. 
It  fulfills  to  the  letter  Lord  Rosebery's  definition  of  the 
threefold  function  of  a  book — "To  furnish  Information 
Literature,  Recreation." 


What  critical  book-lovers  say  : 

SIR  CHARLES  FITZPATRICK,  Chief  Justice  of  Canada:  "  'My  Unknown 
Chum'  is  a  wonderful  book.  I  can  repeat  some  of  the  pages  almost  by 
heart.  I  buy  it  to  give  to  those  I  love  and  to  friends  who  can  appreciate 
a  good  book." 

THE  N.  Y.  SUN:  "They  don't  write  such  English  nowadays.    The  book  is 
charming." 

PHILIP  GIBBS,  most  brilliant  of  the  English  war  correspondents:  "  'My 

Unknown  Chum'  is  delightful." 


Price,  $1.90  net.    Postpaid,  $2.00 

THE  DEVIN-ADAIR  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 
437  Fifth  Avenue  New  York,  U.  S.  A, 


THE 

DAUGHTER 
OF  A  STAR 


Price  $1.90  net    $2.00  postpaid 


"Has  the  stage,  the  so-called  artistic  temperament, 
or  advanced  feminism  ever  yet  given  to  any  man  a 
wife — to  any  child  a  mother — to  either  husband  or 
child  a  home?"  "Are  the  exceptions  so  rare  that  they 
only  emphasize  the  rule?" 

A 

FAR  AWAY 
PRINCESS 

By 
CHRISTIAN  REIP 

Price  $1.90  net    $2.00  postpaid 

These  two  books  of  the  stage  and  the  home  are  unquestionably 
the  best  works  of  Christian  Reid,  who  has  done  more  to  make 
virtue  interesting,  as  well  as  charming,  than  any  Author 
that  ever  lived.  Her  graceful,  limpid  English  might  well  be 
used  as  a  model  for  aspiring  writers.  She  doesn't  depend  for 
inspiration  upon  a  health-destroying  cocktail,  a  cigarette  and  a 
muse  perched  no  higher  than  a  smoke-bowl. 

Her  English  is  better  than  Balzac's  French,  and  she  is  worth 
a  forest  of  his  understudy  authors,  whose  sex-inspired  lures 
smother  the  flaunted  moral. 

Read  Christian  Reid  and  be  impelled  to  commend  her  to  those 
you  love — such  books  tend  to  make  you  an  open  book  to  vou 
and  yours. 

If  you  doubt  the  merits  of  A  DAUGHTER  OF  A  STAR  and 
A  FAR  AWAY  PRINCESS— get  them  at  the  library— then 
you  will  want  to  own  them.  A  book  not  worth  owning  is  not 
worth  reading.  The  Devin-Adair  Company  will  deliver  to  any 
part  of  the  world  and  refund  if  dissatisfied. 

"Critics  praise  poets  and  novelists  that  use  marked  artistic 
skill  on  foul  material;  but,  if  you  cut  open  a  goat  and  find 
his  interior  stuffed  with  rosebuds,  is  the  beast  any  the  less  a 
goat?"  From  KEYSTONES  OF  THOUGHT,  by  Austin 
O'Malley,  the  world's  master  of  aphoristic  thought  and  ex- 
pression, who  says  of  THE  DAUGHTER  OF  A  STAR  and 
A  FAR  AWAY  PRINCESS:  "I  like  these  books.  They  are 
excellent  examples  of  how  to  be  interesting  though  clean." 

THE  DEVIN-ADAIR  COMPANY,  Publishers 

NEW  YORK 


JUST  HAPPY 

By  GRACE  KEON 

[The  work  of  one  who  has  written,  selected  and  edited 
clean  literature  for  millions  of  readers.] 

JUST  HAPPY  is  the  true  story  of  a  delightful  home, 
managed  by  an  intelligent,  educated  wife  who  attends  to  her 
own  affairs — not  yours— of  a  husband- father  who  is  the  pre- 
ferred pal  of  his  own  children. 

Contrast  such  a  family,  such  a  home,  with  the  childless 
chute  to  the  Divorce  Court  Chambers  that  is  now  playing 
havoc  with  manhood,  womanhood  and  the  entire  social  struc- 
ture. 

Then  there's  HAPPY,  the  real  hero  of  the  story— HAPPY 
the  undefeated  fighter  with  his  remarkable  strength  of  body 
and  mind,  his  ugly  mug  forgotten  in  eyes  so  wondrous  wise, 
so  soulful  as  to  make  him  the  Lord  Macaulay  of  Dogdom. 

When  compared  with  the  puny  bow-wows  of  silly  crocheted 
men  and  so-called  women  who  prefer  these  tiny,  hairy  and 
shapeless  creatures  to  the  smiles  and  dimples  of  a  baby, 
HAPPY,  if  he  heard  you,  would  go  away  with  lowered  head 
and  dropped  tail,  ashamed  of  Adam's  taste  in  listing  him 
as — a  dog. 

THIS  BOOK  SHOULD  BE  IN  EVERY  HOME. 
IN  EVERY  SCHOOL 

If  you  are  thinking  about  getting  married  read  JUST 
HAPPY  to  him — to  her.  It  will  encourage  him  to  ask — 
she  will  surely  whisper  Yes,  for  both  will  want  just  such 
a  home  as  HAPPY  and  his  pals  had. 

Price  $1.75  net.  Postpaid  $1.85 

THE   DEVIN-ADAIR   COMPANY,   Publithers 

437  FIFTH  AVENUE  NEW  YORK 


UCSB    LIBRARV 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     000  650  282     7 


